So having Bibles and being God's chosen people is not enough. There must be faith. And this carries over to the Gentiles.
We are in no way excused from these truths, these principles laid out here. Look in America, how many Bibles. You could say if you were an enemy of the Christian, you could say America is infested with Bibles. There are a lot of them. And that does not mean the people who own Bibles will be paying attention to what's in those Bibles.
It doesn't mean they're going to be submitted to the correction that it gives. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Romans.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of Romans chapter 11 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Romans chapter 11, verses one through four. I say then, has God cast away his people?
Certainly not. 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, Yahweh, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone am left and they seek my life. But what does the divine response say to him?
I have reserved for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to bow. Remnants and renegades, that's what we're looking at, Paul, having dealt with how the Jews, having Bibles, could not accept Jesus as their Messiah. Why scripture didn't help them see him, even amongst the leaders who touted being masters of the word. Now he's dealing with how the chosen people, the chosen people of God, did not recognize the Son of God in Christ, but actually went on to crucify him. How could you have Bibles? How could you be the chosen people of God and still miss it? This is what he's dealing with in chapters nine through eleven here in Romans. Then added to that, but then how can the Gentiles who don't have a Bible, who aren't called to be the people of God, they're getting it. They're coming into the church, they're serving in the church, they are excelling. Such men such as Titus, for example.
How could this be? These were big questions that Christianity needed to face. If Christ is from God, then why are so many people of God adamantly opposed to him?
Why couldn't the chosen people of God, having the book of God, received the Messiah of God? Does it make sense? Yeah, because these things are spiritual, they're not natural.
Natural logic would dictate, yeah, well you got the book, you're the people, you would get this. But there is a real spiritual influence on everyone. And make no mistake, this is about the salvation of souls. Paul's not just giving us some theological dissertation on Jewish people versus Gentiles. These explanations are for the sake of truth and strength and the church moving forward by faith. It may be boring to some churchgoers, but Paul's level of intensity on this issue as well as everything else in this letter, but it is max, his intensity is on maximum. He gets it, he understands where this can go, how Satan can use it if it remains neglected. And it's not going to be neglected, because the Spirit of God is directing him.
He knew he had to enter this battlefield for the sake of souls, and he did. Both Jewish and Gentiles, because Gentiles would be asking the same question, how come you people aren't getting this? How come the people of the Bible, the people of God crucified, the Christ, with all of these scriptures you've been giving us? Israel had a renegade history, a history of being renegades.
That's an alternate for apostates. Back there in the days when they left Egypt and entered into the wilderness, there before Mount Sinai where Moses was on the mountain receiving the law of God, they had no printed word yet, but they had signs and wonders galore. I mean, it wasn't one sign given to Pharaoh, it was ten of them.
And there were so many other miracles that went along with that. And so it got to a point where God himself said to Moses, get away from them, I'm going to wipe them out. Exodus 32 verse 10, now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them, and I will make of you a great nation. And of course Moses leaps right into intercede mode, intercessory mode, and he begins praying on their behalf, and God, gotcha Moses, the man that didn't want to serve God to emancipate the people, is now interceding for them. And Moses, sort of like God said, I knew it was in you to come to their defense.
I know they're a pain in the neck, who isn't? So having Bibles and being God's chosen people is not enough, there must be faith, and this carries over to the Gentiles. We are in no way excused from these truths, these principles laid out here. Look in America, how many Bibles? You could say, if you were an enemy of the Christian, you could say America is infested with Bibles.
There are a lot of them. And that does not mean the people who own Bibles will be paying attention to what's in those Bibles. It doesn't mean they're going to be submitted to the correction that it gives. And so this, all of this, Romans 9 through 11 concerning the Jews is very important, and don't let it be wasted on you. It was no secret that God intended to bless the Gentiles, just as he had blessed the Jews, but using to Jews, the Jews to do it.
We won't get to all of that, but we'll get to that as we go through chapter 11 in the coming weeks, if we're still here. These intentions were revealed through many Old Testament prophecies and teachings, explicitly, even to Abraham, who Paul just referenced as we stood and read the first few verses. In the very first verse, he mentions that he's of the seed of Abraham.
That was very important for the Jews. And so Paul has been quoting these very prophecies and will continue to quote them, drawing from all three sections of the Jewish Bible, the law, the prophets, and the writings. The writings would include the Psalms, what we call the poetical books, to make his point, to emphasize his point, to tell them, I'm not making this up.
This is not my opinion. This is the word of God. And so he draws from these sections. But they held so tightly to the Old Covenant, they were not interested in the New Covenant. They refused the New Covenant unless the New Covenant submitted to the terms of the Old Covenant, which would keep it the Old Covenant. That's what he was up against, just like you and I are up against all sorts of weirdo things coming out, authored by hell and spoken by people.
We too have to have a ready response to those who think that their natural logic excuses them from submitting to the word of God. When Jesus first sent out his apostles, there in Matthew it says that he said to them, do not go into the way of the Gentiles and do not enter a city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But after they rejected him and demonstrated that rejection as a nation and crucified him, then he says, as the risen Lord, go into all the world and preach the gospel. In Acts, he says, you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and all the parts of the world to the end of the earth, he says. And so that's what's going on in chapter 11 and now let's begin to peel back some of the layers looking at verse 1. He's saying, again giving his answer why they are the chosen people of God with the book of God and still missing and he says, I say then, has God cast away his people? Certainly not. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin.
Now, I have to insert a caveat here. Mistakes in interpreting Romans chapter 11 can be avoided if you remember the theme is not the church, it's Israel. You know, when Christ spoke of the church, it had not even been born and they didn't have understanding of the church that we would get out of the book of Acts and then develop through the epistles, the letters. So, there have been those in history in Christendom that have tried to spin all this into meaning the church, sort of dismissing ethnic Israel and boy has history proven them wrong.
But they're still out there with their clever arguments that really you should be ready for if you come across them. Promises made to Abraham and his seed concerning racial Israel, that means ethnic Israel, and promises to David and his seed concerning royal Israel, that is of course the line of the king coming out of the family of David. These promises to ethnic Israel and the line of David have been postponed but not cancelled. They're centered in Christ, of course, but they're not finalized until he returns. But we have enough of it fulfilled in Christ to move forward bodaciously in the faith, not sort of apologizing for what we believe, but being very clear and firm. Paul says that Israel's state of unbelief is not permanent, that's what he's telling them. They have the Bible, they're the chosen people of God, the majority of them are all messed up because they want to be messed up, but this is not the end of the story.
And so he reassures the Gentile and the Jewish believers and he sends out flares as challenges to the unbelievers, both Jew and Gentile. So we would have reason to naturally suppose that God is fed up with them. After all, their history is not something to brag about. They can boast of God's participation in their history, but as a nation they really don't have much.
We can point to the two destroyed temples and say, not a good history. Not that the Gentiles have outdone them, because we have not, but given their historical behavior, how they treated Yahweh and their own Messiah, I don't want God to be fed up with me. If he wasn't fed up with Israel, but he did deal with them, he had to step forward and judge them, I don't want him to be fed up with Israel and I don't want him to be fed up with me, and recognizing that indicates that I am beginning to understand the mercy and the grace of God, which are not the same thing, but they go together and we need them both.
So having extensively quoted from much of the Old Testament to make all this clear, that God has repeatedly reached out to Israel, but has been repeatedly refused, does not in any way reflect on the scripture, God's choice of people, and what God is doing. They were created a nation in order that through them all the earth would be blessed. That was God's intention for the nation of Israel, as said to Moses in Genesis chapter 12 verse 3, they were to be a blessing, and Satan knows this, and he hates it. When he draws the nations whom God wants to bless, Satan draws them into hating whatever God wants. Satan draws the nations into being cursed by attacking Israel.
You were reborn into Christ that you would be a blessing, just like Israel was created to be a blessing. At no point can we look at Israel and laugh or mock, but we can learn and apply, and the church has done that over the ages, not all the time, because again, church history is not something the Christians should be boasting about. There are parts of church history that are noble and high and very beneficial to us, but there's a lot of it that is associated with Christ that is not of Christ. But the world doesn't know that.
They think if anybody puts Christ on their name that somehow they're Christians, and we can clear that up. So here are some facts about God preserving Israel even through persecution, proving that he has not permanently cast them off, he's not given them up. Paul did not have this information, but we have it.
He had other information, but this adds to it. Satan, since the resurrection of Christ, has thrown these persecutions at Israel, and here's just a short, very short list. The Roman Empire, there were three major Jewish revolts against Rome that lasted over 70 years.
It began in the days of the apostles, 66 AD, 66 years after the dated birth of Christ, or the coming of Christ, and then the temple was destroyed from 66 to 70 AD, that revolt went on, and then you had two other large ones that not always, one of them was in Egypt and the other back in Israel, until finally they put the Jews out of the promised land, which factors into what God is doing with these people by putting them back into that land. The Roman Empire almost pushed them out of the land eventually. The Islamic hordes tried to destroy them. The Popes and their inquisitions that they sanctioned. Eastern Europe's pogroms, their persecutions, the Nazi Holocaust, the demonically possessed Arab states such as Egypt, Syria, and Iran, and their determination to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea, which is code for genocide, to remove the Jewish people from the world. All of these have failed, but they brought great misery to the Jews. Their national rejection of Christ has put untold miseries on them from age to age. But Israel still stands, and she's growing stronger.
But the worst is yet to come. Had God cast off his people, then the Jews would not have remained a distinct people for over 2,000 years without a homeland. Nobody else comes close to this. Nobody has been put, you haven't, you can't take the Italians, all of them, out of Italy, or the Poles, or anybody else. Could you imagine collecting all the Russians, pulling them out of Russia, letting other people take over that land, then the Russians sort of roaming around the earth for 2,000 years as a people, and then being brought back into their land and re-establishing themselves as Russians. It never happened, except to the Jews, except to Israel, just as God said. That's why the prophetic witness is so powerful. Nobody can dispute our prophecy.
Nobody has anything like it. And so after these three revolts, the final one in 136 AD, they were put out for 2,000 years. Oh, there would be one or two, a few of them left behind, but as a people they were gone without a homeland. So when Paul says, has God given up on them? Certainly not, for I also am an Israelite. Before all those things I've just listed, he was able to say these things.
He would have put them into his preaching as he lived after them. But as an individual Jew, God did not cast me off is what he is saying. If I can be saved, then any Jewish person can be saved. That's the point he is making.
Remember, he's answering objections. He's not just, well let's just talk about this, what the church was faced with. And says Paul, again, salvation is available to Jew and Gentile on the same terms now. The Gentile doesn't have to go down to the temple to prove his righteousness, and neither does the Jew.
We go to the cross of Christ. This from a man who once had zeal without knowledge, now says I have knowledge, and for those of you Jews who still have zeal without knowledge, you too can learn a truth and no longer be contained in your ignorance. Clearly, God has not cast off the Jewish people, and Paul insists that God's judgments are not random and they're not malicious.
And that would be for us also. All Jews are welcome to receive Christ as their Messiah. You know, Paul's conversion, and I'm going on the strength of you knowing what that conversion is, and if you don't know about Paul's conversion, you've got some homework to do in Acts chapter 9, but his conversion is a type of what Israel will be going through, is going through, and will be going through, because Paul again was totally against to Christ, but he's converted to Christ.
That's going to happen to Israel. Same with Thomas, there in John chapter 20, when he insisted that he would not accept the witness that Christ was risen from the dead unless he could see the risen Christ and the wounds, the scars on Christ's hands and feet. In that, Thomas is an exact type of the coming conversion of Israel, because what will they say? Well, it's recorded for us in Zechariah 12, verse 10, and I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication. Then they will look on me whom they pierced, as did Thomas. Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn.
It's going to be emotional as well as spiritual, as well as intellectual, as well as willful, but not without great carnage first. Of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, we covered this last session. No longer can the Jews identify their tribal origin, but in the days of Paul, in the days of Jesus, you could just go down to the temple where they kept the records.
When the children were offered up to the God, especially the males on the eighth day, the records were there, but they're gone now. And so if Jesus is not their Messiah, then he's not coming because there's no way for them to determine that he will be from the line of David as it was in the days of his crucifixion. Now in verse 2, God has, Paul continues, 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, verse 3, Yahweh, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone am left and they seek my life. Well, God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew. God was ready for the renegades.
It wasn't a surprise to God. He put it into their prophecy. Amos, the prophet, he details the judgments of several nations surrounding Israel with incredible accuracy, and they've been fulfilled. He prophesied against Damascus in Amos, chapter 1, verse 3. In verse 6, against Gaza. Gaza was not a district then, it was an area that was largely the remnants of the Philistines. There are no such thing as Palestinians. They are Arabs. They are Jordanian Arabs that crept into the land, and they were given a chance to leave and go back to Jordan when the Jews were being repatriated in 1948.
They opted to stay, and most of the Arabs that are in main areas of Israel, they don't want any parts of Jordan or Gaza because they know the Jews treat them well. Well, Amos prophesied about the Philistines that were then in Gaza, about Tyre, in verse 9 of Amos 1, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel. My point is that God is demonstrating through his prophets, I know what's coming, and I'm going to tell you before it happens, so that you'll know I'm not caught by surprise. You cannot surprise God. You cannot surprise somebody who knows everything. It's like buying a gift for somebody who has everything.
Well, maybe he needs another one. Anyway, God knows the future. The far-sighted dealings, not far-side, that's comical, but far-sighted dealings of God with Israel are astounding and dealing with the world.
In a word, we call it prophecy, end-time prophecy, because there's different forms of prophecy. Anyway, or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah? I'm in verse 2 of Romans 11. And so yet another appeal to Scripture, they should have got that part, how he pleads with God against Israel. Nothing new about their disbelieving their own Bibles, and that's why he's pointing to Elijah, who was pleading against the Jews. The great Jewish prophet Elijah was saying, they're all unbelievers.
I'm the only one left. This is their history. So nothing new about the chosen people opposing God. That's Paul's point. You Gentiles and Jews that are asking, how come you're not receiving your Messiah?
How come they didn't receive Yahweh in the days of the great prophet, in the days of Moses? He could have picked any time in their history. He shuts them down.
His argument, it wins. He's going to continue because now he's got to go on in further parts of the chapter to talk about Israel's future. But precedence for giving up on Israel or interceding for them in spite of their behavior is found in Elijah, even though it's a little misguided initially in Elijah. The widespread apostasy amongst the Jews really dragged him down. Even after this tremendous victory on Mount Carmel, we wiped out a significant number of apostate priests of Jezebel, but she held about 400 in reserve and she held onto that power. She would have had none of that power had it not been for the Jews.
They gave it to her against their own prophet. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reverence Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
