Romans 11:11-15

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So we are in chapter 11. Today, we will be covering verses 11 through 15.
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Now, I've shortened it. It was going to be 11 through 24, but 24 is a good section.
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16 through 24 is a good section all in on its own, and we'll pick that up next week.
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So this one's gonna be a little bit shorter, which y 'all might be grateful for, but as we normally do, we're gonna start in verse 1 so we can keep the context of what
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Paul is saying here. Verse 1, he says, I ask then has
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God rejected his people? By no means. For I myself am an
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Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
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Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?
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Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.
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But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7 ,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
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So too, at the present time, there's a remnant chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works.
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Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. What then?
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Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.
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As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.
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And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
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Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever.
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So I ask, Did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means.
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Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make
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Israel jealous. Now, if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the
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Gentiles, how much more will their fault include in me? Now, I am speaking to you
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Gentiles, in as much then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow
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Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
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Let's go back to verse 11. So I ask,
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Did they stumble in order that they might fall? Paul says, By no means. May it never be. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the
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Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now, we might say,
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This is an odd thing for God to do with Jews, but we have to remember what
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Paul has talked about before in the previous chapters. They had been given the Scriptures.
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They were to keep the Scriptures, and time and time again, they rejected them. They fell away. They brought in other gods.
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Multiple times throughout Scripture, they become a derogatory term by the
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Gentiles. Don't be as the Jews. Don't be as this, because a blight has come upon them.
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But as we covered last week, Romans 11 1, it says, I ask then, Has God rejected his people?
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By no means. For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
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So Paul has made this argument that, Look, if God had rejected the Jews wholesale, then
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I would not be elect. I added to that that all of the
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Jews that you see in the New Testament, they would not be elect either.
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We would not have had Paul and James, the Twelve, or anyone else we see.
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Timothy, Apollos. Paul says,
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No, he did not abandon his people. Then he begins to explain that God kept a remnant for himself in the days of Elijah, and so then, in the first century,
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God kept a remnant for himself, and that continues to this day. There are ethnic Jewish believers in Israel and amongst ethnic
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Jews. There are. Very small number, though, what you would call a remnant.
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But with this second rhetorical question, he addresses what he said earlier in chapter 9, and he does it to reiterate the point about the
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Jews and why God has done this. Romans 9, 30 through 33, and 10, 1 through 4, he says,
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What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it.
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That is, a righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law.
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Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.
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They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense.
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And whoever believes in him, Christ, will not be put to shame. Multiple times,
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Christ is described as the stumbling stone. Brothers, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is that they be saved, speaking of his kinsmen.
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For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.
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For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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So they stumbled over the stumbling stone, as is written, that they would. Now the question is, did they trip and completely fall on their face so as not to be able to regain their footing?
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Paul says, no. They tripped over Christ, over the gospel, considered it blasphemy.
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God has hardened them against it, and in that, the gospel has gone forth to the Gentiles, so as to make them jealous.
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This is presented in Isaiah 53, when they recognize what has happened, finally.
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And as their folly became a blessing to us, it is meant that they would become jealous of that, that we
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Gentiles were obtaining what they had sought for so many years to gain on their own, but that we were obtaining it as Gentiles, simply by faith.
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Not by keeping the law, not by going to temple, not by doing all of the things that they required, both that were required in the actual law, and in the laws that they had created themselves, but simply by believing on Christ, Gentiles were getting it.
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Would that not make you jealous? 12, he says, now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the
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Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? This is another argument from the greater to the lesser that Paul is making.
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Christ does this multiple times. It's done throughout the scriptures. As I said,
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God has used the failure of the Jews to recognize Christ as Messiah, to bring the good news to the
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Gentile peoples of the world. The riches that Paul is talking about is not, as some would say, gold and jewels, but those riches is the gospel itself, and the elect that are pulled from the
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Gentile population. Paul is talking about is the multitude of pagan elect that the
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Holy Spirit has grabbed ahold of and pulled away from their former lives of being reprobate, but if this means their rejection, if their failure means that the gospel goes forth to the world, how much more would their inclusion be a boon to the elect?
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How much more wonderful of a blessing would that be? It's the point that Paul is making.
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Think about this right now. No matter what your eschatological view is, no matter what you believe about the last days or how this happened in the first century, if all of a sudden tomorrow the gospel went forth to the
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Jews, their eyes were opened, and I'm not talking about the state of Israel. Paul is not talking about the state of Israel.
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What he's talking about is the Jewish people. How wonderful would it be that they were counted among the elect if we can rejoice when our neighbor down the street recognizes the truth?
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If we can rejoice over a lifetime of a man's ministry and he brings five people, that lifetime of ministry is worth it if he brings one, right?
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We would rejoice in that, that one was saved. How much more wonderful would it be for an entire people?
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Think about this. We spoke about Jonah earlier, a couple weeks ago, and how he doesn't want to go to Nineveh.
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He hates the Ninevite people. God doesn't let him not go. He makes him go with a fish.
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It's a fish. He makes him go and the entire city is saved.
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The entire city. How wonderful of a thing that is.
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Paul says, now I'm speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am an apostle to the
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Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order to somehow make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them.
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Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. We see this.
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We see this in Acts 9. There's no refuting it. 9 13, it says,
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But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.
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And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.
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But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the
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Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.
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This is Paul's appointment. So Paul, the apostle to the
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Gentiles, is established. And Paul is saying,
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Inasmuch as this is my commission, and I magnify my ministry in that.
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And there's no arguing that Paul did not have a massive ministry, but as massive as his ministry is, and as hard as he works to bring the message of the gospel to the
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Gentiles, he also does so in order to make his fellow kinsmen jealous of it.
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The Jews are extremely hostile in their opposition to the gospel and to his ministry.
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Multiple times they plot to kill him. Just right after Acts 9, if you keep reading, right, they've already begun to plot to kill him.
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So they have to lower him out of the window in a basket because he can't go through the city gates because they're being watched.
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But he hopes that with his ministry, he can at least save some of his kinsmen, that they would become jealous of the
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Gentiles and what they have obtained, and seek for Christ as well. Now, this may seem as though, as I said before, it is contrary.
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Why would God make them jealous? Well, because you remember Romans 10, verse 19, we read not too long ago,
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I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. God said he would do it.
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With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. He is talking about the gospel going forth to the
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Gentiles, that he would give it to them. Now I understand that this is a difficult thing for us to realize in the time that we live in today, because there's not that much hostility between Christians and Jews, especially where we live.
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Not that much. Also, there's not a lot of proselytizing. Jews don't proselytize, and very few
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Christians minister to them. But in the first century, though we confess they later waned, they are ministering.
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The first places they go, even in Gentile cities, is the synagogues. This is where they go first, and once they're pushed out of there, they go to other places and minister the gospel to people.
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But in the first century, in the beginning of the first century, the apostolic gifts of the Holy Spirit are extremely active, and the
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Jews are seeing this in relation to the Gentiles. Being given, as we experience today, great joy in the
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Lord. This is something that I don't think gets talked about enough, but the wonderful joy that you get being in the
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Lord. Not happiness. Happiness wanes.
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It comes and ebbs and flows, but joy. Assurance of salvation.
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This is something that we have today that is given to us, but the Jews who are pursuing this thing by works, they do not have that, just as they don't have it today.
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Just as Catholics don't have it today. Muslims don't have it today. Anyone who pursues righteousness by works has zero assurance.
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Not Christians. Not actual
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Christians, because we realize that there's no work that we can do to assure our salvation.
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We realize that that work is already complete in Christ. But not only those, but all the other things that we enjoy as the elect peoples of God, but also, as I said before,
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Gentiles being healed. The Apostles being able to speak to people in languages that they did not know, and understand languages that they did not know.
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Notice I said the Apostles. Them raising people from the dead.
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Casting out demons from people, even in frustration. And though these gifts did wane later on, as I said, we understand that they did.
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We'll see that at the end of Romans, by the way. The Jews witnessed these things, both in Israel and outside of Israel.
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This should give you a better idea as to why they would be jealous of these things, because they're a lot more present and visualized.
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But the point is so that they would see these things, and they would say, well, I want to be healed. I want to do these things.
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I want assurance of salvation. I want permanent joy that never leaves me. How is this possible?
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Well, Christ Jesus our Lord and His completed work on the cross.
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That's how. By faith in Christ.
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15. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
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This is, in part, a reiteration of his point from before, but set in a little bit heavier tone.
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If the setting aside of the Jewish peoples means the gospel went forth to the rest of the world to call out from their ranks, the
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Gentiles, the elect, then what could their full inclusion mean?
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Well, Paul says that this would mean the phrase he uses is life from the dead.
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Now, this is a difficult passage. Then there are differing views on it.
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This particular passage in and of itself, and that doesn't mean among different eschatologies.
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Within separate eschatologies themselves, there are differing views on this. So whether you're dispensationalist or covenantalist, there are differing views within those camps about what this passage means.
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I tend to lean more toward Calvin's point of view on it, and I'm gonna let him say it rather than muck it up.
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Calvin says about this passage, he says, this passage, which many deem obscure and some awfully pervert, ought in my view to be understood as another argument derived from a comparison of the less with the greater according to its import.
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Since the rejection of the Jews has availed so much as to occasion the reconciling of the
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Gentiles, how much more effectual would their resumption be?
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How much more great of a blessing would their inclusion be to to the church, to the elect?
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Will it not be to raise them even from the dead?
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For Paul ever insists on this, that the Gentiles have no cause for envy, as though the restoration of the
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Jews to favor were to render their condition worse. Since then,
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God has wonderfully drawn forth life from death and light from darkness.
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How much more ought we to hope, he reasons, that the resurrection of a people, as it were, wholly dead, would bring life to the
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Gentiles? It is no objection, what some allege, that reconciliation differs not from resurrection, as we do indeed understand resurrection in the present instance.
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That is, to be that by which we are translated from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life.
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For though the thing is the same, yet there is more force in the expression, and this a sufficient answer."
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John Calvin. Now, in going through what Calvin had to say about this, there were footnotes.
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I'm going to read the footnote on this passage as well, because it might also help you understand what
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Paul is saying. He says, some view these words, life from the dead, as understood of the
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Jews and not of the Gentiles, but the antithesis seems to require the latter meaning, meaning that he's talking about the
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Gentiles, not the Jews. The point in the passage is what would happen to the
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Gentiles if the Jews were included. The rejection or casting away of the
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Jews was the occasion of reconciliation of the world, that is, the
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Gentiles. Then the reception of the
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Jews will be life from the dead to the Gentiles, or to the world.
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He expresses by stronger terms the sentiment in Romans 11 12, the passage that we previously went over about the riches, the riches of the world, only intimating, as it appears, the decayed state of religion among the
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Gentiles. For to be dead sometimes means a religious declension.
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This is expressed in Revelation 3 1 and 2, or a state of oppression or of wretchedness, right?
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To be dead in trespasses in sin, right? The expression that we can't do on our own because we're corpses.
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What can a dead man do? Nothing. As the case was with the
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Israelites when in captivity, Ezekiel 37 and Isaiah 26. They're spiritually dead.
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The phrase is evidently figurative and signifies a wonderful revival, such as the coming to life of those in a condition resembling that of death.
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The restoration of the Jews unto God's favor will occasion the revival and spread of true religion through the whole
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Gentile world. This is clearly the meaning.
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Some of the fathers, such as Chrysostom and Theodoret, regarding these words as referring to the last resurrection, but this is wholly at variance with the context, meaning they're off base.
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Now as I said, this is the view that I lean toward, remembering that Paul has also mentioned himself not too many words ago, correct?
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His ministry to the Gentiles and the magnifying of it has itself brought forth many riches to the
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Gentiles, has it not? So how much more would come forth to the
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Gentiles, those elect of the church, if the whole of the ethnic
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Jewish people were elect and recognized it?
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If Paul has such a vast ministry as he does, James and John and the
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Twelve, how much more would that have been magnified?
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How much more will it be magnified, would it be magnified, if the whole of the ethnic
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Jewish people were in the church? How much more would that mean for the rest of the world?
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Twelve started our faith, founded the church. What would seven million do?
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Now in this, please remember, our primary theme throughout this text, all the other texts, you cannot forget, is what?
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It's the gospel. It is faith in Christ alone. Whether we differ in our views of certain things or not, this is the basis on which the church stands or falls.
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We don't stand on causes, we don't stand on doctrine, we stand on the gospel.
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That is what unites us, and in an aspect I would say that certainly, as some do say in their commentaries, that the inclusion of the
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Jews would not only bring them from death to life, but us from death to life.
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They would bring, and don't use that word, a sleepy, lukewarm, non -existent church to life.
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How would we react as the church if the whole of Israel was saved?
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What kind of life would that bring into the church? Now we don't say that we're dead in our trespasses and sins.
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We're not as the elect. We're alive in Christ, but are we or are we not effective in carrying forth the gospel?
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We're certainly not effective in carrying forth the gospel if we keep arguing about other things, which the church has a vast tendency to do.
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We argue between denominations, and we argue between this doctrine and that doctrine, whether this is law or whether that is law, but it would certainly fix a lot of the problems that we have today, the church being made whole, these things being finalized.
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Now we'll go over this a lot more next week, but I have to say, will it not be a wonderful thing when there is no more wondering or arguing about anything, when the whole church is made clear and under one roof?
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But I also want to say that we must remember that while they remain deaf, while they remain blind, and not only them but others, both
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Jews and Gentiles, we must not gloat or be prideful or snippy in regards to our election, but rather pray.
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Pray as hard as you can that the number of the elect grows and grows and grows, because there will come a day when that number is fulfilled, and it is over.
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There will be no more, and as we stand on one side with Christ, everyone else, including family members, including friends, will be cast into the pit.
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In knowing that this is some of their fates, how dare you not share the gospel with them?
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But do not be prideful in your election. This is something that Paul goes into in the next verses.
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If we are to act in accordance with Christ and Christ's ministry, if we are being conformed to His image, pride is not a thing that should be part of our mindset, but we should be humble before Him, before the
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Father, and rejoice when any number of people is added to our ranks, and that goes for all people.
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I had this conversation the other day. Is there anyone who is too far gone?
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Well, if you have that inclination ever, what I want you to remember is that there once was a man named
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Saul of Tarsus, who was the primary, at least in Scripture, persecutor of the church, who was brought from death to life, and not only counted among the elect, this
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Jew of Jews, but appointed Apostle to the Gentiles, to the people that had no
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God, and he carried that message forth for the entirety of the rest of his days until it cost him his life.
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No one is beyond the reach of God. Next week we'll talk about olive trees and dry bones.