Those who were not my people...

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In this message, Pastor Keith looks at the latter verses of Romans 9 and addresses the issue of the remnant of Israel that will be saved, and God's expansion of the Gospel to include the gentiles. Much attention is also paid to the Judaizers who claimed that one had to be a Jew before they could become a Christian.

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to be in Romans chapter 9 as we have been now these many weeks.
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We take the Bible one verse at a time, one section at a time, one chapter at a time, so as to have a right understanding of what it says.
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And context is key.
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Context is key in anything.
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Context is key in conversations.
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Context is key when you're reading a note that someone's written you, or you're reading an email, or whether you're reading something that somebody posts on Facebook.
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Context is often what makes something make sense.
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And the same goes for the Bible, of course.
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If you read the Bible out of context, you'll never understand truly what it means.
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And Paul's concern, beginning in Romans 9, again, for those of you who've been here, you've heard this, but I just want to keep reiterating this because of its importance.
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Paul's concern, beginning in Romans 9, is providing an apologetic, a defense against an anticipated objection to his position.
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Paul had said God will never forsake His people, yet Israel by and large is in unbelief.
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So does that mean that God has forsaken Israel? And if so, does that mean His Word has failed? The answer, of course, is God has not forsaken Israel because salvation was never a national promise to begin with.
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Salvation has always been an individual promise, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
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Throughout the Old Testament, we see many Israelites who were not saved.
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Think about it.
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Men like Korah, Achan, Nadab, Abihu, all of whom endured the judgment of God, and we can assume were not elect, though they were Israelites.
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Likewise, we see many people who were not Israelites who were saved.
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Rahab, Bathsheba, Ruth, and many others all knew the Lord and His salvation, but were not born Israelites.
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Now, God's Word has not failed because these truths are in keeping with His revelation.
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In fact, Paul time and time again gives us Scripture to support his position that God's decision in election is unconditional.
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He tells us it is not based on works or even on national identity or on heritage, but it is based on His election and His call.
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And he uses the examples in Romans 9 of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses to demonstrate that God will be merciful to whom He wills and whom He wills He hardens.
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That's a difficult passage.
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That's a difficult idea.
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That's a difficult belief.
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But it is nonetheless very true.
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That is where we have gotten to verse 24, which is where we ended last week.
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Tonight, we're going to begin with verse 25.
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We're going to see that Paul continues to use Scripture as his evidence to support his thesis that the Word of God is not failing, but instead, the unbelief of Israel is consistent with his Old Testament, Old Covenant revelation.
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So if you're taking notes, you'll notice in your notes, we say that Israel's unbelief is consistent with God's plan because one, it is consistent with His promises.
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If you have your notes, you'll see that it's consistent with His promises.
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Number two, it is consistent with His person.
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That was what we did last week.
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And tonight, we will see that it is consistent with His prophetic revelation.
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I had to keep the Ps in there.
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His prophetic revelation.
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We will begin our reading tonight, and we will read from verses 25 through 29.
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Romans 9, verse 25.
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It says, As indeed He says to Hosea, Those who are not My people, I will call My people.
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And in the very place where it was said to them, You are not My people, there they will be called sons of the living God.
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And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved.
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For the Lord will carry out His sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.
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And as Isaiah predicted, If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.
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Now next week, we will finish this chapter in verses 30 through 33.
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So tonight, our attention is going to be focused upon verses 25 through 29.
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So what we see in verses 25, beginning in verse 25, is Paul quotes an Old Testament prophet.
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If you want to write, he's going to quote Hosea in two places.
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He's going to quote Hosea in chapter 2, verse 23.
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And he is going to quote Hosea in chapter 1 and verse 10.
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And I want to make mention, if you go back in your Bibles, and you look back to Hosea chapter 2, verse 23, and you go back to Hosea chapter 1 and verse 10, you will notice Paul's quotation is not an exact quotation.
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I sometimes use this as my reasoning behind the fact that sometimes I'll quote the Bible and I'll paraphrase something, and somebody will say, we're not quoting it exactly.
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Well, we have some biblical references for that.
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Sometimes the apostles, when they're writing Scripture, they do not quote it verbatim, but they give the sense of the text.
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Somewhat of a dynamic equivalent, if you will.
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That does not mean necessarily that that's the way we should translate the Bible, as the translators of the NIV and others have done.
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But at the same time, it does mean that there is a sense in the Scripture.
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And if we can give the sense of the Scripture, then we're giving the Scripture.
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As John MacArthur has said, the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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The meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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And when Paul says here, when he quotes Hosea as to say, those who are not my people I will call my people, and her who is not beloved I will call beloved.
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When he says that, that is a paraphrase of what Hosea said, but it certainly is in keeping with the intended meaning.
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Often again, New Testament writers are translating from Hebrew into Greek.
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And any time you have a translation from one language into another, particularly of an Eastern language like Hebrew into a Western language like Greek, there is going to be a translational difference.
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There's going to be somewhat of a subdivide in the way the language is translated.
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This is why when we look at the Old Testament is a translation of Hebrew and English and the New Testament of a translation of Greek into English, there is quite a bit of a difference in how the translations work.
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Hebrew reads, how? From right to left.
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And Hebrew reads, if you started reading the Hebrew, you would read from right to left.
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And for us, we read left to right.
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That's the first initial difference.
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Quite a big difference from how we would read something.
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The same is true when we look at the text of how the Hebrew is translated into English and how Greek is translated into English.
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Because many of the Greek words that are used, we understand because the English language is based very much on Greek and Latin.
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And a lot of our words, like if I use the word in Greek, Kardia, you might not immediately know what that means, but it would be easy for you to figure it out because you all know what cardiac is.
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You all know what cardiac pulmonary resuscitation is, CPR.
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So what does cardiac refer to? The heart.
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So if I say Kardia in the Greek, you'll know that that word means the heart.
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Well, Hebrew is not quite the same way.
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The Hebrew language, again, is a much different type of language.
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And what we are seeing in these times that the Bible, New Testament writers are quoting from the Old Testament, they're quoting from the Old Testament Hebrew and they're translating it into Greek or they are quoting from what is called the Septuagint.
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Now, what is the Septuagint? Does anyone know? Yes, the Septuagint is the Old Testament translated into Greek.
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This actually was available to the New Testament writers.
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That translation occurred prior to the time of Jesus Christ.
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It is called the Septuagint.
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Septuagint meaning 70.
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Because as I understand it, there were 70 translators who worked on the work.
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So it was called the work of the 70 or the Septuagint.
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OK, and when we talk about the Greek Old Testament, that's what we're talking about.
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And the writers of the New Testament, the apostles often reference that book.
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In fact, there's a very funny story that goes along with that.
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None of this is in my notes, but it's hard to see my notes.
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But there's a very funny story that goes along with that situation.
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In the book of Acts, Stephen, who is Stephen? Stephen is one of the first.
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He is the first Christian martyr.
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He is also one of the first leaders in the church.
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He was a deacon in the church, a servant of the church.
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And when he is quoting Scripture to the Sanhedrin, he quotes from the Septuagint.
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And what's funny is he quotes from the Septuagint where the Septuagint makes an error.
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It's an error in numbers.
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And he quotes the erroneous number.
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So that erroneous number is kept in our Bible because that's the Bible he's quoting from.
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But if you compare his number in the book of Acts to the actual number in the Hebrew Bible, you'll notice they don't agree.
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And a lot of people say, well, that's where the Bible doesn't agree.
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Well, it's not that the Bible doesn't agree.
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He's quoting from a translation that had an error.
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And because we know the translation had an error, we know where the mistake comes from.
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It didn't come from Stephen himself or from the Holy Spirit, but it came from the fact that he's quoting a Bible that had a translation.
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It's an interesting little side note there.
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So my point is this.
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When you see Hosea chapter 2 and verse 23 and Hosea chapter 1 and verse 10, if it's not exactly as Paul is quoting it here, you understand, though he is still quoting those particular verses, he is simply giving a paraphrase.
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And he has the apostolic authority.
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He has the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
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He certainly has every right to do just that.
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So what he does here is he applies this passage in Hosea to God's expansion of the gospel to include the Gentiles.
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The Gentiles were formerly...
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And this is so important because Paul makes this point.
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He says the Gentiles...
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Come on in.
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He says the Gentiles were formerly not God's people.
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So he says the Gentiles were formerly not God's people.
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Now, does that mean...
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Does that mean that there were no Gentiles in the Old Testament who were God's people? The answer is no, because we already established that, right? We've got Bathsheba.
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We've got Rahab.
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We've got others in the Old Testament that were Gentiles that came into the nation of Israel and thus became God's people, right? So when he talks about the Gentiles being not God's people, he is talking here about national identity.
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He's talking about prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and prior to the expansion of the gospel, God's people were known by national identity as the Israelites.
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And that is what they understood as being the national identity.
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Likewise, the people who were called not God's people were the Gentiles.
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And guess what? Who in here, and I don't know this because I don't know every one of your backgrounds, but is there anyone in here who is by heritage a Jew? By national heritage, you were born into a Jewish family.
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Okay, I didn't think so, but I didn't want to be so presumptuous as to say no one in here is a Jew.
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I don't know that for sure.
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But I assume that most of us probably were not.
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And the reason why I make that point is because if you're not a Jew, then you are by necessity a Gentile.
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And if you are by necessity a Gentile, then that means that nationally you're not God's people.
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At least you weren't.
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In the Old Testament, to become God's people, a Gentile had to first become a Jew.
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Does everyone understand that? Does everyone understand what I mean by that? You can't become something that you're not born naturally, but you can join a family by what? My children did it.
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Your children did it.
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How do you become a part of a family that you're not born into nationally or naturally? It's called adoption, right? Okay, I don't know.
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I know, but I don't.
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So what's the? Oh, oh, OK.
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I didn't.
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I know Sammy Davis, Jr.
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I didn't know he was adopted.
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Didn't know he was Jewish.
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I know he's part of the Rat Pack.
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OK, I'm right there.
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OK, so in the Old Testament time.
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You had to first be grafted into the Jewish nation.
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Or let me say that again, because I said it horribly.
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You had to be grafted into the Jewish nation before you could be known as being one of God's people.
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So you had to be adopted.
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You had to go through a process of adoption to become a Jew.
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They might not have called it adoption, but in every sense of the word, that's what it was.
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You were taking your natural heritage and putting it away.
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And you were accepting a new identity.
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An identity of being a Jew.
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And actually, they put you through a process.
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They would put you through the process first.
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If you were a male, no matter what age you were, you would have to go through the process of circumcision.
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All right.
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No matter what age you were, you had to go through that.
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You also had to go through a cleansing ritual.
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There were sacrifices that were made on your behalf.
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All of which were done to bring you into the Jewish community.
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That had to be done before you could be considered God's people.
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Because before then, you were a Gentile.
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You were not God's people.
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But then you were a Jew.
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And again, their view was, if you were a Jew, you were God's people.
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That was the understanding.
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And that's how it worked.
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So you were either a Jew, you were God's people.
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But if you were a Gentile, you were not God's people.
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So what you had to do, if you were a Gentile, you had to go by this route to become God's people.
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You had to go by adoption to become that.
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Why is this so important? Why am I stressing this? Because Paul is making the point here.
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He says, Hosea prophesied that I will take those people who are not my people.
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And I will make them my people.
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Here's why that is so important.
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Because now, you don't have to go through a Jewish adoption process to become one of God's people.
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You don't have to become a Jew to become a Christian.
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Why is that important? Well, because there was a lot of people during the time of Jesus Christ who taught that very thing.
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They taught that you, before you could become a Christian, you had to become a Jew.
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They are called in the Bible.
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Let me get this out of the way.
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They are called in the Bible.
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And I'm going to misspell circumcision, I'm sure.
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Is it a C or an S? C.
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C.
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There it is.
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Okay.
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Is that right? Yes.
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Okay.
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Circumcision party.
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And trust me, it's not like a circumcision party like what you're thinking.
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Like we're all going to get together and have circumcisions.
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No, not that kind of party.
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That's not what we're talking about.
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The circumcision party meant it was a group of Jews who believed and taught that before you could become a Christian, a group by party, meaning group.
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It was a group that taught.
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Are we good? Okay.
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It was a group of people who taught that before you could become a Christian, you must first become a Jew.
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Now, we also have come up with another name for them.
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We use this name in our teaching.
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Oftentimes, we call them the Judaizers.
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It's the same group.
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In fact, the Judaizers is simply a nickname for the circumcision party.
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They, again, taught very simply that before you could become a Christian, that you had to become a Jew.
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Paul is making the point in this text, and he's quoting from Hosea.
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To make his point, again, what is Paul doing? He's using the Bible to solidify his argument.
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He's quoting from Hosea to say, very simply, and he says, Those who are not my people, I will call my people.
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And those who are not beloved, I will call beloved.
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In the very place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called the sons of the living God.
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Gentiles are now included because instead of having to be adopted through the Jewish nation, a person could now be adopted directly into the family of God.
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By virtue of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the adoption that occurs, taking us out of the world and into the family of God, that adoption does not have to go through the nation of Israel.
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The adoption is an immediate, instantaneous, and familial connection to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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It does not have to go through our submitting to the Jewish right.
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And again, this was a major problem in the first century.
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This was a major problem because, and I'll be quite frank, this group had a problem giving up what we call legalism.
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They had a legalistic standard that people must hold to a certain set of rules and a certain set of laws, and they must be attached to these rules and these laws, or they can't be God's people.
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And when they saw a Gentile person who had not been circumcised, they said, wait a minute, there is a law that states that that man must be circumcised.
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And if he's not circumcised, then certainly he can't be counted among God's people.
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He cannot be one of God's people unless he is circumcised.
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And that's what the Jewish party made their argument.
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And boy, they went to the text of the Old Testament.
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And they said, see, the law is you have to be circumcised.
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And if you're not, you're cut off from the people of Israel.
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And see, because Israel is the national elect people of God, if you're not circumcised and you're not part of the nationally elect people of God, if you're not part of the nationally elect people of God, you're not saved.
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I imagine this party, the circumcision party, were a pretty zealous group.
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In fact, I know they were because we see the Apostle Paul dealing with them throughout the New Testament.
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In fact, the very first church council was convened because of the circumcision party.
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I want to show you that.
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If you want to open your Bible, go with me to the book of Acts.
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Hold your place there in Romans because we will be back.
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But I want to go through this situation in Acts because, remember, Acts is the history book.
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Acts tells us what's happening.
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In the book of Acts, we see, starting in chapter 15 and verse 1, we see the circumcision party at work.
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I'll give you a chance to get that.
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It says, but some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, saying, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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That's pretty straightforward language.
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That's, I mean, we could stop right there and we could say, that's exactly what I just said they said they'd say.
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Or, yeah, I'm not sure I said that right.
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That's exactly what I've been saying that they're saying, is they're saying specifically, unless you join the Jewish nation, because that's how a person joined the Jewish nation.
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Circumcision was the outward sign of the covenant of God with the people of Israel.
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And unless you have that outward sign, you weren't a member of the nation.
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So they said, unless you do this, you cannot be saved.
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That is the very heart of legalism, by the way.
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It's someone who says, unless you do a work of some kind.
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And I don't care what the work is.
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I don't care if it's picking up this crayon and taking it over the other side of the room.
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I heard a guy one time because we were talking about baptism.
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And he was trying to convince me that baptism is necessary for salvation, that baptism itself, if you don't do it, you can't be saved.
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And I said, well, what if you get saved in a desert? What if you get saved where there's not enough water to be immersed? And this guy believed in immersion only.
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So he couldn't go to the well, we could maybe use a little bit of saliva or something and anoint someone on their head.
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He couldn't use that argument because maybe if he had been a Methodist or a Presbyterian, he might could have made that argument.
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And hey, we could have had that conversation.
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But he couldn't because this person was from the historic Church of Christ.
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And the historic Church of Christ teaches that you have to be immersed and that the immersion actually causes your salvation.
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It is part and parcel of what causes you to be saved.
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And if you have not done that thing, you cannot be saved.
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And what the historic Church of Christ has basically done is they have become the Judaizers of our time because they've gone from being the circumcision party to the baptism party.
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They've gone from saying, I'm sorry.
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Oh, the baptism.
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I know what you're talking about.
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I know what you're talking about.
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There is a belief held in the Roman Catholic Church and in some among the historic Church of Christ who would say that if there's no way to be baptized, your desire to be baptized is baptism enough.
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That's what you're talking about.
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There are some who would teach that.
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But again, what is it doing? It's putting all of the emphasis on the work rather than on what Christ has accomplished.
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It's putting the emphasis on what I do, the part that I participate in, the part that I bring to the table.
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You see, as being a Reformed Church, we don't even believe we bring faith to the table because we believe faith is something God opens our heart to do.
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We don't even believe that's our contribution.
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We believe that is an act of grace.
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We believe we bring nothing to the table, that salvation is of God alone.
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That's part of the whole deal.
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Once you say it's anything you have done, you have stepped outside of grace and into the box of legalism.
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And that's what this group did.
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So he says, but some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, gotta love Paul and Barnabas.
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Yeah, I love that it says had no small dissension.
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That means they had a big dissension.
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If they had no small one, they had a big one.
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They had a big disagreement over this.
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Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.
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So being sent out on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers.
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See, the thing was, Paul knew by experience that what the Judaizers were saying was wrong.
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Peter knew by experience that what the Judaizers were saying was wrong because Peter had witnessed the whole house of Cornelius filled with the Holy Spirit of God and none of them were circumcised.
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This is why Peter says, who can prevent water that these should be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we? So he knew.
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Anyway, it says in verse four, when they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.
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But some believers who belong to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.
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See, they just took it.
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They just took a step.
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First, it was circumcision.
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Now it is full law keeping.
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And I will tell you this, beloved legalism never stops at one thing.
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The historic Church of Christ, again, I'm not here to smack on them tonight, but hey, they just happened to come into my mind because the historic Church of Christ, they began with a big deal about baptism.
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What came next? Can't have musical instruments in the church.
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I will say this about the historic Church of Christ, though.
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Go to the Church of Christ.
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They can harmonize.
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They had to learn how to do it.
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They got no guitars.
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No, they sing very, very well.
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But the truth of the matter is they don't have musical instruments in the church because there is a doctrine in the historic Church of Christ.
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Maybe I should say the United Church of Christ.
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This is not really the historic Church of Christ.
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It's the United Church of Christ.
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The Stonite movement, which is a branch off of the restoration movement, and this long history doesn't matter.
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The point is one of their foundational teachings is that first, you have to baptize and be second, no instruments in the church.
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And then came the legalism.
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And now if you've ever been in one, if you've ever talked to anyone from there, it is a very legalistically minded group of people because you can't stop at just one rule.
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Once legalism grabs a hold and it becomes this is how you're saved is by this rule.
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Well, another one will come and another one will come and it will become all of these standards that you must keep.
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And grace goes away and is replaced by works.
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It is by nature how things happen.
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Now, let's go on because I haven't got anywhere near where I want to get in time as reading verse 6.
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The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.
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The matter of whether or not a person had to become a Jew before they could become a Christian.
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That's the question of whether or not you had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses.
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That meant becoming a Jew.
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They were gathered together for this conversation.
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Verse 7.
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And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, who is Peter? Peter, of course, he's a leader among the apostles.
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We know who Peter is.
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No question who Peter is.
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So he's going to stand up and he's going to make a proclamation of truth.
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He's going to set them straight.
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Brothers, you know that in the early days, God made a choice among you that by my mouth, the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe right there.
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He's talking about the story I mentioned earlier, the going to the house of Cornelius.
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He's talking about he said, you know, God sent me to a whole house full of Gentiles.
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That's a reference.
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And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith, not by circumcision, but by faith, not by keeping the law, but by faith.
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Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? I love that verse because it's so true about the law of God throughout the Old Testament.
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We don't see Israel keeping the law of God throughout the Old Testament.
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We see Israel failing time and time again.
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And Peter is making a point to them.
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Why are you trying to establish the law of God among them when our forefathers couldn't even keep it? What is the deal? What is your thinking? Verse 11, but we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will.
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He says, we believe that we will be saved by grace because we couldn't keep the law.
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We believe they will be saved by grace because if we couldn't keep the law, certainly they're not going to be able to keep the law.
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We believe that the law will not save, but grace is the only thing that will save.
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Peter is preaching a grace message because the gospel is a grace message.
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And all of the assembly fell silent.
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Verse 12, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
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Remember, Paul had gone out on a missionary journey.
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He had gone out among the Gentiles and he had seen God's work after work after work among the Gentiles.
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And here he is just bearing testimony to what he had already seen.
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After they finished speaking, James, this is the same James we believe that wrote the book of James.
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We also believe this is the James who is the half brother of Jesus Christ.
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He is an elder at the Church of Jerusalem.
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OK, James replied, Brothers, listen to me.
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Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name.
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Oh, that's so beautiful.
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God visited the Gentiles with grace.
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It doesn't say with grace, but that's what it's saying.
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He visited the Gentiles with grace to call a people from the Gentiles for his name.
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Beloved, you underline that and you put that's me.
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You are the people among the Gentiles that God has called by his name because you're not among the Jews.
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You're from the Gentiles.
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And with this, the words of the prophet agree just as it is written after this, I'll return and I will build the tent of David that has fallen.
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I will rebuild its ruins and I will restore it that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who makes these things known from of old.
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Now he goes on in verse 19 to give a judgment, something we don't like to do anymore.
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Just to throw that in there as a people, we have become a people who don't know how to make judgments anymore.
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All we know how to tell is tell people how we feel about stuff.
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We don't say things are right or wrong.
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We'll just say, oh, this is how I feel about it.
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Instead, James stands up.
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This is the judgment.
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This is the decision.
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This is how it's going to be.
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I'm not sure he said it in that dialect, but that's what he's saying.
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This is how it's going to be.
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Therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood, things that were by their very nature, the things people who are seeking righteousness ought to do.
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Sexual immorality is something that was understood to be something that was natural that you did not do.
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That you did not go off after idols, that you did not eat the animals that had been sacrificed to idols.
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These were simple things he was saying.
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Let's write him a letter and let him explain.
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These are the things that would be best to be kept away from for a moral people.
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For from ancient generations, Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues.
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Now, the gospel, the group that is being proclaimed, the gospel here is the Gentiles and this group that's claiming that they have to become Jews before they can become Christians.
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They have just been told by the first what we call the first ecumenical council of the church.
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The first time the church ever came together and made one solidary decision where the leaders of the church gathered and a decision was made.
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The very first decision was this.
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The Judaizers are wrong.
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What they're teaching is wrong.
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This rather is what we will teach.
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That is the grace of God that saves the Jew.
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That is the grace of God that saves the Gentile.
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And any type of teaching that would put salvation by works is wrong.
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Now, why do I make such a big deal about that? Because again, this is part and parcel of what Paul is talking about in Romans chapter nine.
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If you look back now, we can go back there.
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Paul is dealing with this issue when he says, as indeed he says in Hosea, those who are not my people, I will call my people.
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The entire subject of Romans chapter nine through Romans chapter 11 is how God can relate to Israel and to the Gentiles in such a way that he still be righteous.
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And Paul's answer is simple.
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God has not called Israel as a nation alone.
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But God has called individuals out of the nation of Israel.
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And God has called individuals out of the nation of the Gentiles.
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We are all who are here tonight, who are saved, are saved because God called us individually out of our sin and into his family.
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God has adopted us into his family.
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This is why it says, and in every place where it is said to them, you are not my people, they shall be called the sons of the living God.
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That is who you are.
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If you are saved tonight, if you have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ tonight, it is because God adopted you.
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He called you out of darkness.
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He called you into light.
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It is all of God.
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And he did not call you through the person and the people of the Jews, but he called you through the person and the work of his son, Jesus Christ.
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And that's how he adopted you.
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No matter where you are or where you came from, that's where you are tonight.
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And you know what's so sad is that as much as Peter proclaimed that in Acts 15, as much as Peter believed that, even Peter fell back into the old ways and had to be rebuked by Paul.
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Now, you've got to figure if there's anybody in the world that you wouldn't want to be rebuked by if you're Peter, it would be Paul.
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Who is Paul? Paul is the one who had persecuted the church.
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Paul is the one who literally stood and held the coats of the men who stoned Stephen to death.
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Yet at the same time, the Bible tells us in the book of Galatians 2, verse 3, it says that when Peter, I'm sorry, it's not.
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It's in Galatians 2, verse 11.
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It says, But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face.
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This is Paul speaking.
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He said, I opposed Paul.
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Paul opposed Peter to his face.
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Why? This is what it says.
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It says, For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.
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But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
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And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
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But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas, before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? If you can't paint a more interesting picture.
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Here is Peter.
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He has seen the gospel go out among the Gentiles.
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He's gone himself to the Gentiles to proclaim the gospel, and he's eating and supping with them.
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But here comes the Judaizers over the hill.
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What's he do? He backs up quietly.
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He gets away from him.
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He doesn't want anything to do with him.
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He shuns them.
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Other people around him, the other Jewish people, they start shunning the Gentiles.
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Even Barnabas shuns the Gentiles because he's seen Peter do it.
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Peter's the guy in charge.
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Of course, he wouldn't do anything wrong.
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So now they're all shunning him.
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And what does Paul do? Looks him right in the face.
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He says, I oppose them to his face.
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By the way, that teaches us a little something about how we ought to deal with people.
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We ought not talk behind their back, but we might ought better go to their face and say, look, what you have done is not the right thing.
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He says, I oppose them to his face.
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And I brought up to him his error.
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And I said, look, you eat with the Jews or the Gentiles and you do all these things.
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Yet when the Jews come, you behave like a Jew and you shun the Gentiles.
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You should know better.
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And that's Paul's proclamation to Peter there.
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And again, the irony of ironies was that the one who was first given the revelation concerning God's opening up to the Gentiles would be the one who was actually called out for not accepting them when he should have.
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Now, Israel's unbelief in the Messiah is consistent with God's prophetic revelation.
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We see this again in verses 25 or excuse me, 27 through 29, because he quotes first, he quotes Hosea.
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He says, those who are not my people, I will call my people and her who is not beloved.
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I will call beloved.
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And in the very place where it is said to them, you are not my people there.
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They will be called the sons of the living God.
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So he quotes Hosea first.
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Then he quotes Isaiah again.
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He says, and Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved.
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For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.
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And as Isaiah predicted that the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.
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That is a quote from Isaiah.
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And I do not have the reference in my notes.
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I thought that I did.
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I'm sorry.
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And he quotes Isaiah there.
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The first thing he says is, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved.
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That was not what was believed during Jesus's time.
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There was a belief that if they were Abraham's offspring, they were saved.
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In fact, there was a teaching among the Jews, and I can't quote it for verbatim right now, but the teaching basically went like this, that Abraham stands at the gate of hell and ensures that none of his offspring will go therein.
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That Abraham ensured that none of his offspring would enter into the gates of hell.
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You see, that was the belief, the national identity, national salvation.
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It's like I said, the problem with most people's interpretation of Romans nine is they want to read a national salvation in the Romans nine when it's actually antithetical to what Paul is teaching.
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Paul is teaching the opposite, that it's not national salvation, that out of Israel, there's a remnant and out of the Gentiles, there's a remnant that will be saved.
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And God will save people from the Jews and God will save people from the Gentiles.
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Who got it first? The Bible says to the Jew first and then to the Greek.
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We know that.
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Who was the expanded amount in the Old Testament? It was expanded throughout the people of Jews.
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But what happened in the New Testament, in the New Testament, it expanded among the people of the Gentiles.
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And that's what we're going to learn about in chapter 11.
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When you get to Romans chapter 11, he begins to talk about the fact.
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That part of the reason for the hardening of the hearts of the people of Israel was so that God would open the heart to the people of the Gentiles.
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Isn't that an amazing thought? That God would harden one group and open the heart of another.
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That He would take the root which was holy, the root of Israel, and that He would graft in among that root a wild olive branch.
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And who is the wild olive branch? We are.
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The Gentiles.
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That is us.
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And again, when he says here, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved.
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God always keeps a remnant for Himself.
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Salvation is not about national identity.
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It is about individual election.
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God's choosing a remnant, keeping a people for Himself, keeping them from falling into the grievous error of their contemporaries.
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We see that all throughout the Old Testament.
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We see it in the New Testament and we see it even today.
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I do believe, beloved, I do believe that in our great land there is a belief.
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And please do not get me wrong, because I do not want to squelch anyone's political philosophies, but I do want to just open maybe a thought in your mind.
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Because there is a belief among some that America is a Christian nation.
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Now, before you tell me that we were founded on Christian principles, that's not what I'm saying.
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What I'm saying is this.
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America has never been a Christian nation.
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And what I mean by that is this.
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You have never been a Christian because you were an American.
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You know what I'm saying about that? You've never been a Christian because you were an American.
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Neither has ever being an American made you a Christian.
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Even in our land, when there was a time that the majority of people believed in Jesus Christ, and even in our land, when the churches were more full than anything else, because that is what people did and how people believed in that, that was how the social construct, the church was at the center of town.
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Even then, just being an American didn't make you a Christian.
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My point is this, even though that's not the case, there's always been a remnant.
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And there always will be.
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God will always keep for himself his people.
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There will never, ever come a day when all the Christians are vanquished from the earth.
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Because God will assure for himself a remnant.
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When Christ returns, there will be people alive who call upon his name.
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Because the Bible says that the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
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And those who are alive will be caught together with him in the cloud.
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That means that believers will sustain their faith till Jesus comes.
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The devil will never have ultimate victory.
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There will always be a remnant.
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Sometimes we feel very alone.
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And as our nation becomes more and more secularized, as our nation becomes more and more sinful, and as we see the culture degrade into things that literally are turning our stomachs over left and right.
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I see them all the time on television.
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We must remember that God has his remnant.
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As Elijah cried out to God, There are all these people who have rejected you, Lord, and I alone am left.
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What did the Lord say to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee.
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Beloved, that's the wonderful promise we have.
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And that's what Isaiah is reminding them here.
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No, not all of Israel is going to know Christ.
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Not all of Israel is going to be saved.
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And I know there's a passage that says all Israel will be saved.
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And we're going to deal with that when we get there.
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But the point of the matter is, if that text is taken as most people take it, well, that means every Jew is going to be saved.
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Then all of Romans 9 makes no sense.
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The point is, there will be a remnant.
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There will always be a remnant.
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You all are part of that remnant.
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If you're a believer tonight, if you're a part of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, you're a part of that group.
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And you know the remnant may get smaller, but it will never go away.
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And when Christ returns, there will be people alive who call upon His name when they see Him coming in the clouds.
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And Isaiah promises us that because he says, Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved.
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For the Lord will carry out His sentence upon the earth fully and without delay, as Isaiah predicted.
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If the Lord had not left us offspring, we would become like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.
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We are very much like Sodom and Gomorrah in our sinfulness.
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But we'll never be Sodom and Gomorrah as a world because there will always be the remnant of God in the world.
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If the remnant was taken out, if that one righteous that was left as Lot, when Lot walked out of the city of Sodom, what happened? It was destroyed.
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Now, I don't like to make inappropriate connections biblically, but if you think about the fact that when the church is taken out of the world, what comes next? Swift destruction.
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You think about Sodom and Gomorrah and you think about what happened.
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Abraham kept asking Him, Lord, Lord, if there be 50, would You do? And if there be 40, would You? And he says, and finally he sent the two angels, and he went and he got Lot and his two daughters and his wife, and he took them out.
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And as soon as they made it out of town, the only thing that is keeping the swift and perfect justice of God from crushing the world is the fact that He has an elect people, that He is called by His name, that He is guiding to righteousness and conforming to the image of His Son.
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Right now, that's the only thing that keeps His hand of judgment back.
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But beloved, when the church is called out, and I ain't saying it's going to happen on May 21st.
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It'd be great if it happened before then.
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But when the church is called out, the book of Revelation is very clear as to what comes next.
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All right, I will stop there.
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And I will say that we're going to look at the last three verses next week.
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And then in June, June 1st begins our study of comparative religion.
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So next week, we'll finish Romans 9.
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We may even do a quick overview of Romans 10, 11, just so we understand we're going to study after the summer's over.
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And then comparative religion comes.
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So let's have a word of prayer.
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Father, we thank You.
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We praise You for this time to study.
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We thank You that You have just encouraged us all by the Word.
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We pray now as we leave and go into our individual homes and back to our individual jobs, that You'll keep us focused on the Word.
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Keep us intent to do what Your Word commands us.
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To learn from the examples of the Scripture.
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And always, O God, to apply the truths to our hearts.
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In Jesus' name we pray and for His sake, Amen.