Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing—a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. Open your heart to receive today's blessing. May God make you like Ephrem, Joseph's second-born, whose name means twice fruitful. You're destined to be more fruitful than you can now imagine. Joseph had a dream, but he could never have seen this coming.
After 30 years of abuse and trauma, slavery, false imprisonment, God put him on a throne in Egypt. It looked like he was going to die in an Egyptian dungeon. Instead, God used him to save the world from famine, to save his own family from starvation. I'm blessing you to be like Ephrem. Blessing this to be a year of double fruit.
May whatever good you can imagine be double fruit, sweet fruit, not the stuff of raw ambition and worldly success, but real fruit, the byproduct of the branch abiding on the vine.
So may God's Spirit nourish you, fill you, and produce the fruit in and through you. I bless you to be like Ephraim twice. Fruitful pastor, author, and Bible teacher Allen Wright.
So they too have now been disobedient, in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have say it with me mercy on all. Mercy is the heart of God. Love, kindness, and grace is the heart of God. That's Pastor Alan Wright.
Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt. Excited for you to hear the teaching today in this series, "The Loved," a study of Romans chapters nine through eleven, is presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries.
So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Just contact us at pastorallen dot org. That's pastorallen dot org, or call eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven Five four four forty eight sixty. More on this later in the program, but now let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright.
Okay, beloved, are you ready for some good news? Where our minds get strained, our brains get twisted, and Our ability to understand ends there. Instead of confusion and frustration, God wants to take us into praise, into wonder, into something transcendent. If you understood everything about the mind of God, if you understood everything about God, there'd be nothing transcendent about Him. But it is the the majesty and glory.
Of being a child of a father who's infinitely wiser than we are, that leads us into a life of adoration. He's altogether glorious, and I hope to, with Paul, take us from mind-bending truths to doxology, to praise of God. I think I might have told you sometime before that I had a friend, a pastor, in Texas, and one of the Sunday school teachers in the elementary class had been teaching Genesis, and they'd gone through Genesis creation story, and they got into the seventh day of creation, and the teacher thought it'd be a good thing to have the young kids draw a picture to represent what they'd been learning about creation. And so they all drew a picture, you know, and you can tell a lot about what's going on in a kid's mind by the pictures they draw. And this one kid, this picture that it says, "Day seven, on the seventh day, God rested." Got a few trees there, a big sunshine, and God there with a with kind of a superhero cape.
And you can make it out, but the call out thing there, you see what God's saying? Nailed it. I just love that. I just love that. Like, because you know, God celebrated His own creation, and He made everything that exists, and He said that's good.
And then He gets to the end, He said that's very good. You know, so God is like nailed it. You know, the very thing that I wanted to do, I did. God spoke. It was in his heart, in his mind, in his being.
You see, and so it's it's it's it's it's it's from God, all of it. And he spoke it into being, and then it came to be just like he meant it to be. Wow, nailed it! And and then that creation that's from Him is is called to worship Him in return.
So it's of him, it's from him, but it's through him. It's made through him, and then all of that glory returns to him. That's where we're going to wind up in verse thirty-six, and it is to point us to a God that is worthy of great celebration. That little kid's stick figure drawing nailed it. Is to say that there's something in the design of who we are that is most delighted when, indeed, we come to end of self and find ourselves just amazed at the God who had the wisdom to create all of this and then to usher in salvation and redemption to a broken world.
And what Romans one through eleven has been all about. Is how God has done it, how He has created, how the creation fell from Him, and how God called a people into Himself, and though they were disobedient, how God made a way for us to be in right standing with Him through Christ, and how even in our disobedience, God has shown forth His mercy. And Paul gets to the end of all of this, and he just says, "Wow! Oh, the depth of the riches of understanding and wisdom of God! Oh, how glorious!" So, I've just called today's message, "Oh, God." It is text that wraps up some of the arguments that he's been making in chapters nine through eleven that we've been seeking to explain as best we can.
Let's dive in here at verse twenty-five. I think that maybe if you've been with us for these these sermons on nine through eleven, these closing verses will help make sense of all of it. Lest you be wise in your own sight. The NIV says, "Let you be conceited." I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers.
So Paul talks like this often, where a mystery is something that you can't fully understand, and yet we want to look into the mystery. That's the that is the dialectic. That's the that is the the the the New Testament's approach. There's mystery that you can't fully understand, but we're going to look into it anyway. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and we'll see this in a moment.
But when he speaks of Israel here in verse twenty-five, it does seem that he's speaking of what we would call ethnic Israel, meaning. The the the the nation of Israel, the people, the ethnic people, because elsewhere Paul speaks of Israel as the true Israel is being ethnic Jews and Gentiles being grafted in, all who actually believe in Jesus and have been saved. But here, when he says a partial hardening has come upon Israel, he's speaking of ethnic Israel. And verse twenty-six. And in this way, all Israel will be saved, as it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion, and he'll banish ungodliness from Jacob.
And what is a little bit confusing is verse twenty-six, as we've been talking about this, because we know that elsewhere Paul said that not all of Israel is truly Israel, and by that he meant that. There is a spiritual Israel within ethnic Israel, believing Jews, and we've made plain. I hope that there is never a hint in the New Testament of there being two ways of being saved. There's not one way of being saved; it's because of your ethnicity, and another is because of faith in Jesus. It's all because of faith in Jesus, and even the Old Testament saints, we're told.
We had not met Jesus. We're still saved through the coming work of Jesus, because Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
So no one is ever saved because of their own righteousness, but anyone who is saved is saved by the righteousness of Jesus. And so then we come to this, and it says, "And all Israel will be saved." And so you're left wondering, "What's he talking about here?" In order to understand this. We need to think of four different times or seasons of time, or we might think of eras, or but think of kinds of time, right? Not necessarily chronology, but kinds of time. And the first is the time of Gentile—that's everybody that's not Jewish—disobedience, and this is when God let the nations go their own way.
We learned about this in our very opening chapter of Romans early this year, Romans one twenty one. Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and exchanged. And birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity and so forth.
So there we learned that this is the Gentile world. This is the world apart from the Jewish people that rebelled against God, should have been able to know God through the creation, but didn't honor God. And so, what God did, seeing all that disobedience, He had a sovereign, gracious plan, and He called a man named Abraham. And he said, "I'm going to make you into a nation." And he didn't call Abraham because Abraham was more righteous than others, but he wanted to put his own righteousness on display. For when Abraham believed God on these things, we're told God credited to him his righteousness.
And you're seeing the gospel in advance.
So God called this people into Himself, and they became known as Israel. And they were not more. Righteous than anyone. In fact, what's highlighted in the Old Testament is their constant rebellion and idolatry. But they were God's people, elected unto God, and so in the Gentile disobedience, God called a people unto Himself.
So, in one sense, you could say because of the Gentile disobedience, God formed Israel. But then there is a second season that Paul is talking about here—a second kind of time, in which the Messiah comes, and we're told he came into his own, but his own did not receive him.
So Jesus was Jewish, thoroughly Jewish, and he was born into ethnic Israel, born into the Jewish people. But his own did not receive him.
Now it's very important to say when we say Israel rejected him, we don't mean every single Israelite, right? We don't mean every Jewish person rejected Jesus. In the same way, when we said that Gentiles were disobedient, we don't mean that all of them were. I mean, you look back through the Old Testament, you see people like Melchizedek. A mysterious king who is Gentile that is appears and is honored and is righteous.
His name means King of Righteousness. You see instances like where Jonah goes and preaches to the Ninevites and many of them repent. Right, so there, Gentiles that in the context of of the Gentiles that were mostly disobedient, there were some righteous ones, and in the context of the Jewish people who rejected Jesus, of course there were. Numbers of them who did receive Jesus. Think of Apostle Paul himself, who was Jew of Jews.
So when he's talking about all the Gentiles were disobedient and all of Israel, it is I think here more of the kind of way we talk—a figurous speech. When you just say all of them rejected him.
Well, not all of them yet. Which is going to lead us to some understanding about what we mean by all of Israel.
So that's the second season, this time of disobedience of Jewish people who have rejected Jesus. But then there's a third time that Paul's talking about here, and that's when Christ's people rejected Him. God, in His great mercy, began through Pentecost, and then the preaching of Paul and others began reaching to the Gentiles. Which was completely out of understanding for the Jewish people, who thought that they were God's special people, and God starts pouring out His Holy Spirit upon all flesh, and then we go into this era of millions and millions and millions of people who are not Jewish, who are, Paul says, grafted into Israel as the true Israel, and who are the people of God. And so that's the third season of this.
That there's a sense in which he's speaking of the Jewish disobedience, rejection of the Savior, not receiving Him, and then there's this incredible worldwide move that's still going on of people coming to Jesus who are not Jewish. And I know in America we're discouraged sometimes, and we see reports of decline of church attendance and all of that. But you must think globally. Because globally, people are coming to Jesus, and especially the southern part of the globe, but in unbelievable numbers, and so it's continuing on. And then he's going to speak here of a fourth season or a fourth kind of time, and that is in which he says a time in which there's going to be a new and wonderful outpouring of mercy upon Israel.
And what's a little bit confusing here, I can't spend all of our time on this. Is that we know that Paul has spoken otherwise in Romans nine through eleven at times of the true Israel or the spiritual Israel, which is not speaking of all ethnic Israel. But remember, in verse twenty-five, he seems to be speaking of ethnic Israel, and so it seems like, and most scholars and interpreters, regardless of their end times theology. Agree that here, Paul, when he says all Israel will be saved, is most likely talking about ethnic Israel, and so what he seems to be talking about here is a time of mercy that is still to come, in which, because Israel, Jewish people, have seen grace, and the gospel, and the power of the Holy Spirit amongst the Gentiles. That God is going to, in some way that we don't understand, is going to soften the hearts of many, many Jewish people who will come to saving faith in Jesus.
Not a different way of salvation, but a future time of, and which is a glorious thing to think of. Right, so.
So he has this to say of those four seasons, and you need to understand that those four seasons, those four kinds of times, are at play here. We get to verse twenty-eight. As regards the gospel, they, the Jewish people, are enemies for your sake, because he's writing to Gentiles here. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. And he's talking here about Jewish people who look again at the first part of verse twenty-eight.
As regards the gospel. Their enemies, as regards the things of Jesus, they are like enemies to you, and and yet he says if you look at the second part of that verse. But as regards election, they are beloved.
So what he's saying is that on the one hand, because of the Jewish rejection of Jesus, not all of them, but as a whole, they are like enemies of the gospel. But as regards election, they are beloved.
By God, so though Israel on the whole didn't accept Jesus, and thus are from a gospel perspective like enemies to Jesus to into to the Christian message, it hasn't changed God's love for them. Why? Because this is so important a principle to understand about who our God is. God doesn't throw away people or things that don't work. And he doesn't let his promises fall empty to the ground.
But look again at verse twenty-nine. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. He's talking about the call to Abraham and the gifts of revelation and favor that God showed Israel. The gifts of his presence through a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, the gift of giving them the Ten Commandments and the law, revealing himself to Israel, the favor that he showed them through so many centuries, putting his mercy on display. Those gifts and the calling are irrevocable, and so what he's saying here is that Israel, my chosen people, disobeyed.
By not following the law, but they ultimately disobey by not receiving my son.
So on the one hand they're like enemies, but at the same time there's something higher at work, and that is that they are beloved.
So Israel's disobedience doesn't have the final word, and in the mystery of God's design, what Paul is saying here is this all has a purpose. Look at verse thirty. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they may now receive mercy. Let's make sure we're clear about who we're talking about here. The pronouns.
Look at this again. For just as you Gentiles were at one time disobedient to God, but have now received mercy. Because of their Jews disobedience, so they the Jews to have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you Gentiles that they the Jews also may now receive mercy.
So when the Gentiles. And all the nations were disobedient. God did something, and He brought forth Abraham, and He made a nation unto Himself. And when He sent Jesus, and the nation He made unto Himself did not, on the whole, receive Jesus, in their disobedience, God poured out the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles. And what he's saying is that in watching the Gentiles and the mercy that's shown them, that there is going to be a time in which many more Jews are going to come and receive that same mercy.
So, in His infinite wisdom, God is using all kind of disobedience to get more people saved. Wow, that's just glorious! I like a God who knows how to take our disobedience and use it up for the good and the saving of many people. And that's what he says at verse thirty-two. He says it plainly: God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all.
So the aim of God in all of this is to show forth His mercy. That's don't miss the heart of God here. Look, look at verses thirty to thirty-two again. This time, just noticing the theme: for just as you were one time disobedient to God, but now I've received mercy because of their disobedience.
So they too have now been disobedient. In order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have say it with me mercy on all. Mercy is the heart of God. Love, kindness, and grace is the heart.
Of God. Allen Wright, today's good news message titled "Oh God" in our series "Beloved." It's a study of Romans, and Pastor Alan is back with us here in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day. In just a moment, Allen Wright Ministries is more than just a daily radio broadcast. Here are Daniel and Pastor Alan explaining another layer. You know, Pastor Alan, through this radio ministry, it's often been said that this is a friend, a friend in time of need.
It's a friendly voice. It's that encouragement I needed to hear, and the Lord used this ministry.
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Just give us your email address, and you can start receiving. A daily blessing. Click on to pastorallen dot org today to learn more and take advantage of this opportunity. Again, that's pastorallen dot org. Back here now, sitting with Pastor Alan in our parting good news thought for the day.
Placing a bookmark here. Got more teaching to come. This one's titled "Oh God," as we really are coming into a landing of our big study of Romans, especially we look through chapters nine through eleven. Pastor Alan.
Sometimes the greatest thing ever. Can happen is you just see the glory of the gospel and something he just says, "Oh, I think it's like Paul just just cries out here, 'Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.' You know, just just oh, and and I think sometimes we we we get you know to where we we want to get practical help from the Word of God and there's plenty of it, and we want to be able to Get good counsel and good advice on living in difficult situations, but sometimes the thing that changes you the most is just oh, just just encountering God's goodness and the wonder of the gospel just does something to you, and that's what this text is about. Oh, oh, wow! Learning to say wow. What really is amazing?
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