God's Plan For Israel (Romans 9-11) Bible Prophecy

Romans 9 .13, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. So this is a quote from the book of Malachi chapter one. And in its original context, this is dealing with two nations, the nation of Israel and the nation of Edom.

So you have a contrast. Israel was a chosen people, Edom was not. And then Romans 9 moves on to Pharaoh. So in the book of Exodus, we saw another contrast. Israel was delivered, Egypt was destroyed. So in both cases, it wasn't because Israel was so righteous and they were doing the right thing and Edom and Egypt were so wicked.

That really wasn't the issue. What's the issue? It's about God who shows mercy because neither one deserved God's mercy. All right, you with me so far? You agree so far?

Okay.

So Egypt received justice. Israel received mercy, not based on their works, but based on God's grace. And it's the same with the Canaanites. Israel was not given the land because they were so much greater.

It's all a demonstration of God's sovereign choice. Now, today, people don't think along those same lines. Today, I think it's safe to say, whether it's people in the United States or just people in Western nations or developed civilized nations, I think we become entitled.

We think that people owe us something or we think that the government owes us something or we think that God owes us something. Is that a fair assessment of the current generation? I think it is. So the average person today, when they hear about God choosing one and not the other, that's their reaction.

Hey, wait a minute, that's not fair. Or the term that you're hearing a lot now is that is not equitable. And that's really what equity means. It's about fairness. Well, here's the thing. God is under no obligation to show mercy to anybody.

God doesn't have to choose any nation. He doesn't have to bless any nation. He doesn't even have to bless any person because all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God. Now, God will bless you with eternal life if you believe in Jesus because that's the arrangement that God has made with mankind.

But God wasn't under any obligation even to make that arrangement, right? Still with me so far? Still make sense?

Okay.

God Hardens and Shows Mercy According to His Purpose

Romans 9, 14. So Paul understands this. He understands what the objection is going to be to all of this. He says, what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Because he knows that's what people are gonna say.

What's the answer? Certainly not. Or God forbid. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion so then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs but of God who shows mercy.

So it's because of God's compassion and his loving kindness that he shows this mercy on some.

But not others.

I wanna give this illustration and this might be a bad illustration. Maybe this breaks down somewhere but bear with me if it is. Cause we had a stray cat coming around our house the past month or so. But let's say you live somewhere and over the past 10 years, you've had four or five stray cats come through the area.

What are stray cats looking for?

Food, right?

They either want food, shelter or both. So let's say you've had five stray cats come through over the years. There was one time you decided to take one in. Maybe it was a gray, you just like gray cats and a gray cat came and you took that in your house.

But then your neighbor finds out that you didn't take in the other four. And they say, you know what? You're a terrible person. You don't care about animals.

How dare you?

You know, you should have taken in all five cats. The fact that you took in that one and not the other four, you're just a rotten, that's not fair. What a rotten person you are. What would your reaction be?

Like, are you serious? Like I didn't have to take in any of the cats.

Right.

But I took in one and you should be praised, I guess, for taking, depends who you ask, but you should be praised for taking in the one. So you get the idea, right? God is under no obligation to do any of this.

God is under no obligation to make a covenant with any nation. So as soon as we understand that and we're okay with it, then this should be a pretty easy thing. God hardened the heart of the Canaanites.

They chose evil to begin with. He hardened their heart and he did it so that Israel would destroy them. See, if you get all that, then this should be, okay, I trust God. Because the other option is you think God is this terrible monster.

And there are a lot of people in the world who believe that way. So for God to spare any nation when they had committed atrocities, which the Canaanites had done that, God was under no obligation to spare them.

And you know, when Israel started to commit those same atrocities, because Israel started to behave after a while like the Canaanites. If you read, so far, if you read the book of Joshua, you get the idea that most of the tribes were eliminated, but that really isn't the case.

A lot of them were spared. They became a snare to Israel and Israel started to adopt their practices. So when Israel started doing the human sacrifice and the homosexuality and all of those other things, what did God do to Israel?

He did the same thing that he did to the Canaanites. He cast them out of the land. I think this is something that many Christians in America are starting to come to terms with that if the Lord allowed calamity, if the Lord allowed calamity and judgment to come upon this nation, he would be well within his rights to do it.

When Israel strayed from God, remember what he did? He separated them into two nations, the North and the South. Wait, he already did that to us once, didn't he? And we recovered from that, but he did that to Israel.

You had Israel to the North, Judah to the South. Eventually the North became so godless, so apostate, that God allowed them to be conquered. And you're kind of hoping, oh, I hope that doesn't happen here.

But as a Northerner, I have to tell you, the North is worse. The North is much more godless than the South. That's not to say that the South is anything to write home about, but it's worse up here. It's more godless up here.

You mad at me for that? Hey, I'm a Northerner. I can say that. If I was from the South, you might be able to get mad at me, but eventually the Southern kingdom of Judah, they fell too. God allowed them to be taken captive into Babylon.

But because they had a covenant with God, he was merciful to them and he brought them back. But then they started to drift again. Things started to crumble. And then they were put, the Lord allowed them to be put under the boot of imperial Rome.

And in the New Testament, we all know the date, 70 AD, when Jesus predicted the temple would be destroyed. It was, just like Jesus said. And then the Jews were scattered all across Europe after that. So it kind of gives you pause.

The Lord has already done this to that nation and many others. Would he do that to a nation today?

Well, yeah.

I mean, why wouldn't he? So that's serious business. Now, here's the thing. The Jews were scattered and yet 2 ,000 years later, they have, at least to some degree, preserved their identity, haven't they?

Why?

Well, because of the covenant that God made with them. Turn to Romans chapter 11. I think if the book of Joshua proves anything, it proves that God was with Israel and not with the Canaanites. And it's, again, not based on Israel's righteousness.

It's based on God's sovereign grace. And the same is true today. Why have the Jews been preserved as a people? It's because of their love for Jesus Christ. No, obviously not. It's because of, not their faithfulness, it's because of God's faithfulness to keep his promise.

And those promises will be fulfilled in the end times. There's no more highbites. You've never met a Gibeonite, right? There are still Israelites though. So look at Romans 11, verses one through five.

I say then, has God cast away his people? God forbid, certainly not. Paul says, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew.

Or do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah? How he pleads with God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.

Now, was Elijah an Israelite? Yeah, he was. And yet he was a prophet. He was a preacher who preached against his own nation. So when a preacher today preaches against the United States, it's not because they hate the United States.

It's why.

Why do we do it? Because, well, I would argue it's because we love our country. So we want to see our country move in a godly direction. That's why we preach against the sins of the nation. I know some people have the idea you're not supposed to do that, but I think you're being unfaithful to the legacy of the preachers of the Bible if you don't do that.

Look at verse four. But what does the divine response say to him? That's Elijah. I have reserved for myself 7 ,000 men who have not vowed the need to bail. Even so then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

So at this point, when Paul wrote Romans, which was about 56 AD, 57 AD, this is 1 ,400 years after the book of Joshua, and there were still Israelites. Still Israelites faithful to the Lord. Now, in order to be a faithful Israelite when Paul wrote Romans, what did you have to do?

A lot of things have changed. Were you supposed to offer sacrifices and do all the things that we read about in Exodus? No, things have changed by this point. To be a faithful Israelite when Paul wrote Romans, what did you have to do?

The one main thing you had to do.

Accept Christ.

Yeah, you had to accept Christ as the Messiah. So at this point in time, the writing of Romans, there are still, there's still a remnant of faithful Jews. Yeah, you could have been like, well, Paul was in some ways like Elijah, like there's not very many of us left.

We're the small minority, we're the remnant, but we're still here. God has not cast away his people. But he says that the rest were blinded. So the majority of the Jews in Paul's day were blind. Look at verse eight, just as it is written, God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear to this very day.

Can I give a prediction?

Well, I'm sure it's not wrong.

Yeah, well, it's not a prophecy, okay? It's not a prophecy. God didn't tell me this. It's a prediction. The next big thing will be, it's racist, sexist, all that stuff. Now, the next push will be you're anti-Semitic and the Bible is an anti-Semitic book.

And Christians are anti-Semitic because look, look what you just read in verse eight, that God has given them, who's them? Israel, he's given them a spirit of stupor. So my prediction is preachers will be now labeled as anti-Semitic for preaching.

But are we preaching against the Jews because you hate Jews? No, no, that's not what Paul was doing. Paul was preaching against his own countrymen because he loved them. Remember, he said he was willing to be accursed.

In a sense, Paul said, I would be willing to go to hell if it meant that my people could be saved. So it's, so I hope I'm wrong, Larry, but time will tell. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recompense to them.

Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see and bow down their back always. So here's what God has done. God has hardened the heart of not the Egyptians. He hasn't hardened the heart of the Canaanites.

Now he has hardened the heart of who? His own people, the children of Israel. So I'm going through all of this to kind of illustrate this concept of hardening your heart. The application for us today would be, don't harden your heart.

When you hear the gospel, when you hear God's word preached, don't harden your heart. Maybe there's something that you know you shouldn't be doing, but it's mentioned in the text of scripture, in a sermon, you hear it and you're like, ow, that kind of stings.

And you know you should make a change, don't harden your heart. Because anytime we hear preaching, we have two options. Either hear it, receive it and act accordingly, or what's the other option?

Reject.

Yeah, reject, turn away. But in doing that, you are hardening your heart. Now, if you're a Christian, God is not gonna step in and harden your heart to where you can't believe. You don't have to worry about that, but you're not doing yourself any favors.

So God hardened the Canaanites so that they would be destroyed. When Israel went into apostasy, they had their hearts hardened against God. Then God, in an act of what we would call a judicial hardening, He stepped in so that the unbelieving Jews couldn't hear.

He did this back in the days of Elijah. He did this, or Isaiah, doing this now with Paul. So now they cannot hear, they cannot believe what's God's purpose. So going back to Joshua, his purpose was to destroy the Canaanites to bless the Israelites.

Now he's hardened the Israelites in order to bless who? The Gentiles. Or we would say he's hardened them in order to bless us. Right, the Gentiles in the New Testament church. Here's the major difference though.

The Canaanites were hardened once for all, destroyed, God's finished with them. Is that the case with the Jews?

No.

Look at Romans 9, verse 11. I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not, but through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has what? Come to the Gentiles. Verse 15, for if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

Which gives you a pretty good indicator that God is going to return to them and breathe new life into the nation of Israel. Paul then goes on to give the illustration of the olive tree. Israel, they're the natural branches, right, that are broken off.

We, the Gentiles, are grafted in. Then in verses 23 and 24, Paul indicates quite clearly, I think, that the natural branches, the Jews, will be what, grafted in again. But then there's a warning to the Gentiles found in verse 18, and what's the warning for us?

Okay, the Jews have been broken off. We've been grafted in. They're gonna be grafted in again, but until that happens, make sure you, Gentiles, don't boast against the branches. What does that mean, that we should not boast against the branches?

Who wants to put that in their own words?

It's not something we did on our own.

It's not, oh, that's a good point. It's not something we did on our own. It's God's grace that we were brought in, good point. I think what he's saying is don't speak against or boast against the children of Israel.

So I was trying to think about this. What is one way that we could boast against the Jews or boast against the natural branches? How about by claiming that we have replaced them and say, hey, sorry, God's done with you.

It's all about us now. God is finished with you, and now we are the apple of God's eye. Is that a possible way that we could boast against the branches? I think it is. Now in this age, it really is all about the church because the church is the church of Jesus Christ, and it's all about Christ.

But when this age comes to an end, what's God going to do? Wrath them in again, and he's gonna go back to working with Israel. How do I know that? Look at verse 25. Paul says, for I do not desire brethren.

If there's one chapter that proves the future for Israel, it's Romans chapter 11. Paul says, for I do not desire brethren that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion that blindness, what, in part, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

So the majority of Israel does not believe blindness has happened. It's not complete. There's still some that do believe until, right? So there's a time in the future where this is all going to change.

And when it changes, the next verse says, and so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come out of Zion and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.

Who's the deliverer? Yeah, obviously the deliverer, another way to say that is the savior. The savior is going to come out of Zion. He's gonna come out of, well, he comes out of heaven, the heavenly Zion first, but he's gonna come down to the city of Jerusalem, right?

The book of Zechariah says that he will set foot on the Mount of Olives. So basically, when does this happen? This is a reference to the second advent, which happens at the end of the seven-year tribulation.

We believe in the end times, the seven-year tribulation, there's gonna be a great revival amongst the Jews. This will be led by the 144 ,000 sealed from each of the 12 tribes. The two witnesses who I believe are Moses and Elijah, maybe not, but that's who I think they are.

At the end of the tribulation, after this massive revival, Satan doesn't like this. Satan doesn't want a massive revival with anybody, certainly not with God's people, because he knows his time is coming to an end.

So that's when the devil is going to stir up all nations, and all nations, they're already under his control anyways, but he's gonna put it in the hearts of the kings of the earth to move against the city of Jerusalem.

Zechariah 14, verse two tells us that. And then the Lord, once again, like he did in the book of Joshua, remember last time we ended, how do we end? And the Lord fought for Israel. You know he's gonna do that again?

At the end of the tribulation, when the whole world moves against Jerusalem, the Lord is gonna come out of Zion, and he is going to fight for Israel. In a lot of those same plagues, where there's the hail, and all that's gonna happen again.

And it's all written in the book of Revelation.

Why?

Because the Jews have been so faithful, and so godly, and obeyed the 10 commandments. No, it's because of the election of grace. God, pure grace, God chose them, and he isn't going to change his mind.

Look at Romans 11, 28. "'Concerning the gospel,' because they don't believe it, right now they don't. "'Concerning the gospels, they are what? "'Enemies for your sake.'". So the salvation could go to the Gentiles.

"'But concerning the election, the election of God, "'they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. "'For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.'". Or irrevocable, which is it? Irrevocable or irrevocable?

Either way, it's without repentance. God is not going to change his mind. And I don't know about you, but that gives me great peace, to know that God does not change, he himself does not change, and that he's not going to change his mind, he's not going to go back on his promises.

He's not going to go back on his promises.