The Jews and the Gentiles
RO149-01

The Jews and the Gentiles in the Tree of Blessing

Arrogance

So, now Paul, in order to avoid this attitude, potentially, on the part of the gentile Christians, proceeds to reveal a secrets that God has told him about the Jews, of which the gentiles should be aware. This is a secret that nobody ever knew before. It is a secret that all the prophets of the Old Testament never knew about. It's a secret that God has given to Paul. And He says, "Now, I want to share the secret with you, because it will help you to understand where you are with God, and it will enable you to maintain the position of humility that a person who has been served by the grace of God should always keep.

So in Romans 11:25, we read, first of all, about the hardness of Israel: "For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery." For introduces the subject that Paul is going to talk about. He is referring here to the subject of the Jews as a nation being grafted back into God's tree of blessing. Verse 25 actually expands on the hope which was expressed in verse 24; that hope, namely, that if the Jews would go positive, toward the Word of God, and toward the Lord Jesus Christ, they would get back into the special favor with God that they once enjoyed. So, Paul is going to expand on that. He says, "For I would not." The word "would" is this Greek word "thello." This word means "to want." Furthermore, it has a negative with it. So, Paul is very strongly saying, "I absolutely do not want you to misunderstand something." The Greek negative is "ou," which is the strong one. He is speaking something here to a group of people that he calls "brethren." He is referring here to gentile Christians.

Don't be Ignorant

So, the apostle Paul says, "I do not want you to be uninformed on a very special point. It so happens that the apostle Paul likes this expression about not being ignorant. He uses it several times in his writings. And as you look at these occasions, you discover that it always signals some very important revelation. When he says, "I don't want you to be ignorant," it's not just some little small thing. Right away, that's a sign to you that something big is about to be stated. You can see this, for example, in Romans 1:13, 1 Corinthians 10:1, 1 Corinthians 12:1, 2 Corinthians 1:8, and 1 Corinthians 4:13. Paul, furthermore, always uses this word "agnoeo," about not being ignorant, along with the word "brethren." Believers are the special concern of the apostle Paul relative to spiritual ignorance.

This, I think, is rather interesting, because if you know anything about churches, you know that the average church service is not at all concerned how ignorant people are about spiritual things. You walk into the average church service, and you will very quickly discover that the last thing that is on the preacher's mind is the concern that the congregation, who has taken the trouble to arrive, will be informed about something that God thinks, and that will be given some understanding that will remove part of their spiritual ignorance. Instead, the preacher's objective is finances, buildings, membership, public relations, and promotions of all kinds. But the last thing is to say, "I must give these people some information, so that when they walk out the door, they're not as ignorant about a point of truth relative to God as they were when they came in. They are not as uninformed as when they walked in.

The Mystery

A Secret

It Ephesians 3:3-9, that secret is described, and it also gives us the illustration of what the word "mystery" means. Paul says, "How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery." And immediately, here's a secret. Paul knows it. How did he get to know it? God told it to him directly: "As I wrote before in a few words, by which when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ." Now he gives it the name. He said, "I want you to understand why I know about the mystery of Christ. I received this secret information directly from God: "Which in other pages was not made unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." So, here is the definition of a mystery. It is something, which in the past, people did not know. It is a very important bit of information. But only God knew it.

Now, through spiritual leaders, and through the writers of the New Testament, apostles, and prophets, God the Holy Spirit has revealed the mystery to them. What is it? "That the gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel." Was it a secret in the Old Testament that gentiles were going to be saved through the coming Savior, the Messiah of Israel, and that the gentiles would go to heaven? Was it a secret that the gentiles would be saved? No, it was not. It was very clear in the Old Testament. God told Abraham, "I'm going to bless the whole world through you. Then the New Testament tells us that what God meant by that was that He would bring salvation to all people through the descendants of Abraham. There was no secret that the gentiles, like the Jews, were going to go to heaven, on God's basis.

What was a secret was that the Jews, who were a very exclusive people, and were told never to intermix with gentiles; never to have anything to do with the gentiles around them; to remain racially pure; and, to intermarry among themselves only. These people were going to be joined to gentiles in a super body of believers called the church, the body of Christ. That's the secret that Paul says, "God told me." And Paul says, "It floored me. I could not believe what God was saying – that He was going to take gentiles and Jews, and make one special super body of saints out of them. I had to adjust to that. As a Jew, a gentile was nothing but a dog to me. And for God to be telling me that the gentiles are going to be part of a super group of saints with the Jews, and that the gentiles would be fellow heirs of the same body with the Jews?"

Verse 7 say, "Of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of His power, of which body of Christ," Paul says, "I became a minister. My job as a missionary is to build up this special body of Jews and gentiles, which are uniquely related to Jesus Christ." He says, "This was given unto me, who is blessed with the least of all saints is this grace given – that I should preach among the gentiles the unsearchable, which is of Christ, and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which, from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ."

There you have a perfect definition of "mystery." It's been hidden in God from the ages past, and now God has made it known to Paul – this particular mystery. There are other mysteries, but he's talking about the one of Jews and gentiles joined together in one body.

So, in Romans, when Paul says, I want to announce to you a mystery," right away, we understand that here's a secret about something else that God has kept to Himself, but now of which he's going to inform the believers.

The Mystery of the Rapture

So, this is a mystery that you may be the ones to participate in – the secret of going to heaven like Elijah, and like Enoch, without ever having gone through physical death.

The Mystery that Jesus Christ Indwells Us

So Paul says, in Romans 11:25, "I don't want you to be ignorant (gentile Christians) of a certain mystery." And here's why, he says, "Lest you should be wise in your own conceits. The word "wise" is the Greek word "phronimos." "Phronimos" means "to be arrogant in yourselves." That's what the Greek Bible says: "Arrogant in yourselves," meaning thinking that you are in the know about something, such that you have developed a certain arrogance about yourself. I remind you that the core expression of the sin nature, which exists in your genes (in the genetic structure of your body) – the core expression is arrogance. This is arrogance, in all kinds of ways, that comes through. This is the one thing that, if a Christian gets his eyes centered on, he can sit on a lot of evil that never gets a chance to express itself in his life. He stops and says to himself, "Now, that's an act of arrogance on my part. That's the sin nature. And I'm not going to do that.

However, Paul says, "Here is an expression of the arrogance of the sin nature. The idea is that you, in your own estimation, are very much in the know," when in fact, Paul says, "You don't have the straight scoop at all. You think you are very much in the know about the Jewish people. You are very much in the know about what the Jews have done, and what God's attitude is toward them. Our arrogance makes us think that we are superior to people who are under discipline. And that's a very dangerous game. You may see someone who is really fouling up his life because he has drifted off from the Word of God, and he has drifted off from the fellowship of God's people. He never shows up in church services. So, the world finally begins accumulating like barnacles all over him. And pretty soon he becomes hardened and insensitive to the things of God. And naturally, life begins to come apart. You see him becoming debased. You see him becoming a person who is violating the honor code of God in the Ten (moral) Commandments, and so on. Your heart should go out to that person. But you are tempted, in the process, that you understand why he has the problem to be arrogant about yourself – to play the role of the Pharisee who points to the guy who is a sinner, and says, "I thank God I'm not like that character." The "publican and the Pharisee" syndrome is easily repeated by us.

That's what Paul has in mind here for these Christians who look upon the Jews. And I can relate to what he is saying, because in our academy morning faculty prayer meetings, we are currently reading through the book of Deuteronomy. And we're in those early chapters where Moses is about ready to check out. The people are going to go into the land without him. He writes this book as a summary of what God has done for them, and how God has led them, and what is now before them, and how they should respond. And those early chapters are continually relating the great blessings of God, and the great promises, and how God is going to deal with them. And as you read them, you say, "Boy, I wish I had that is a lifestyle. I wish I had this as a promise. I wish that all this kind of wonderful life could be mine just because I obeyed the commandments of God. I'd do it. I'd go with the commandments. And several times, I've noticed, around the faculty table that there is the expression coming out. It's unbelievable that they would blow it when they had it so good, and they had such promises, and they found that they actually worked. As a matter of fact, when God prospered them, that was the thing that did them in. They couldn't keep being the sweet, old, humble, regular, ordinary folks, with no pretensions and no making over themselves, but understanding that it all came from God. Like Job says, "He has given; He has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

So, it is so easy for us to look upon the Jew and say, "You really were a stupid bunch;" and to look upon every Jew that you meet and say, "I can't believe that you come from a group of people that could have been so dumb and so backward as to have spoiled such opportunity for good that you had. But we do it all the time. And when you see other Christians spoiling their opportunity of blessing, just because they refuse to relate themselves in obedience to the Word of God; and, just because they refuse to rise to the quality of the image of Christ.

I am what I am by the Grace of God

Antisemitism

Paul says, "Here's a secret: that hardness, in part." The word "in part" is a numerical word, and it means that a certain number of Jews, but not all of them, had this hardness toward Jesus Christ. Some of the Jews are positive toward Jesus Christ, and they're saved. It's the same picture that we had that most of the Jews are broken off the tree of God's blessing, but not all the Jewish branches, because some of them are positive to Jesus Christ. But he says, "Hardness has happened to some of these Jews in their experience as a nation. That is what he's speaking of here specifically. This happened at the point when they rejected, as a nation, Jesus Christ, and the result was they personally now bear the bitter results of that decision.

Paul declares that while the nation of Israel as a whole is hardened toward Jesus Christ, some individual Jews respond. That's what he means by "in part." And these non-hardened Jews do trust the Lord, and they are saved. The hardening of the nation of Israel is partial. There is always a remnant of Jewish believers in every age.

In Romans 11:7, we've already seen them referred to under the word "election" – those who are positive toward Christ. And then he talks about the rest – those who are not. In Romans 11:17, you have this same comparison between the Jews. Some are broken off (the negative). The rest of them are not there. The gentiles are put into the tree among them.

So, the grace of God has indeed selected some Jews for salvation from the nation of Israel. Did we know that from the Old Testament? Yes, we did. We've already (early in this chapter) looked in the Old Testament. And we have seen how the Old Testament revealed, ahead of time, that the Jews were going to do exactly this to the Messiah when He came. They were going to be hard toward Him. They were going to reject Him. And some passages in the Old Testament describe extensively what they were going to do to him in putting Him to death, and the agony and pain to which they were going to put their Messiah Savior. That's no secret. That's not something we didn't know. Hardness for some of the Jews has happened to them.

Here is the secret: "Until." This is a point in time (a terminal point for the hardness to end). Aha, now that the Old Testament never told us – that the time would come when the Jew who was going to be condemned (that was very clear) was also going to have the hardness removed toward the Savior, and he would be restored to blessing. That was good news to any Jew who wanted to thinks about the sad condition to which his nation had fallen. He says, "Until the fullness," and that's the Greek word "pleroma." That means "something that comes to completion." The completion of the gentiles; that is, the full number of gentiles are brought into God's plan of salvation until the full number of gentiles be come in.

This is the plan that we read about in Acts 15:14, that God is currently executing: "Simeon had declared how God did first visit the gentiles to take out of them a people for His name." Simon Peter made it very clear that God is taking out gentiles to become part of a special body, with Jews, who are then going to be God's special people. When these gentiles come in (that is, when the church is completed), then something very wonderful will also happen for the Jewish people. The mystery reveals, then, that the hardened attitude of the nation of Israel toward Jesus Christ is temporary. That was the secret. When the church is completed, the hardness of the Jews will be terminated.

Today, if you talk to a Jew, he will tell you that they will never trust in Jesus Christ, and that they will never accept Jesus Christ. But they're mistaken. Something is going to transform the national attitude of the Jews toward Jesus Christ. The Jews will become a saved nation. Therefore, we know that God has not cast them off permanently. There is no room in the Abrahamic Covenant for God to terminate His promises to make of them a great nation which will be ruling this world. There is no place in the Abrahamic Covenant, because there are no "ifs." It's all up to God.

The gentiles, therefore, have no ground for pride or superiority over the Jews. They are indebted to the Jews for everything relative to salvation. The time is going to come when the Jewish nation will rise again. And the gentiles should know that the Jews are not a people that God holds in contempt – only discipline. The spiritual hardening toward their Messiah was revealed in the Old Testament, but it was never revealed that God would bring it to an end.

The Salvation of Israel

What follows, in verse 26, about the salvation of the Jewish nation, is parallel to what is said in verse 25, about the salvation of gentiles. A Jew does not go to heaven because he keeps the Mosaic Law. A Jew does not go to heaven because he keeps the Ten Commandments. A Jew does not go to heaven because he keeps the golden rule, any more than anybody else does. All those are works – human works. A Jew goes to heaven on the same basis that a gentile goes to heaven – trusting in Christ, Who has done it all for us. The full number of elect Jews will be saved in the same way that the full member of elect gentiles will be saved.

However, he says, "And so, in the same manner, all Israel," And here, the amillennialists really have a field day. They think they're really got us over a barrel. All? What is the word? "pas." That's the Greek word. What does it mean? Yes, it means "all." And what is it? "All of Israel." What does the word "Israel" mean, first of all. You may research this on your own, but I will tell you ahead of time that you will find that everywhere that the Bible uses the word "Israel," it is always associated with racial Jews.

"Spiritual Israel"

So, they took the word "Israel," and they gave the impression that it could apply to Christians. That is not true. When the Bible talks about spiritual Israel it's talking about Jews who are saved, over against unspiritual Israel – Jews who are not saved. The church is not spiritual Israel. The word "Israel," in this context, has been regularly used to mean Jews, not gentiles. It's been used in contrast to gentiles. So, the term "all Israel" refers to the Jewish nation as a whole in God's dealings. That does not mean that every individual Jew is going to be saved.

John the Baptist

Well, the word is getting out. People are excited. John is a very impressive preacher. He's a powerful speaker. They sense that this is a man who is speaking for God. Especially remember that 400 years have passed since Malachi. Four centuries have passed since a prophet has stood up and identified himself, and proved himself to be a direct communicator from God. Now, that was exciting. Again, we have a prophet of God among us speaking.

So, that's the situation. Notice what Matthew 3:5 says, "Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all ('pas') Judea, and all the region round about the Jordan." Now, do you believe that that Scripture means that everybody who lived in the province of Judea was standing there on the banks of the Jordan River ready to be baptized? No, it just meant that people from all over Judea as a whole were pouring in to listen to John, and to be baptized. In the same way, God the Holy Spirit uses the term "all Israel" to mean the Jews as a nation are going to come to the point where they will be saved. That does not mean that every Jew who ever lived, or who was living at the time of the return of Christ, will be saved. At some point in time, this is going to be true.

In Acts 2:36, the same idea of the Jews as a national group is referred to under the term "all the house of Israel." What does "all the house of Israel" mean? It means the Jews as a group. What is God going to do to the Jews as a group? He is going to save them ("sozo"): "And so all Israel shall be saved." This word refers to being born again spiritually so that you are regenerated. You have God's absolute righteousness imputed to you. All your sins are forgiven. You are now qualified to spend eternity in heaven. That's what he means. They are going to be saved. So, they go to heaven. And it applies to the time when the Jews as a nation are going to be a saved group.

This word is future tense – some place in the future. It is passive. They can't save themselves. This is something that God is going to do for them. It is a statement of fact. When is that going to be true? When will it be true that you can look upon the Jewish nation, and say, "Every single person in it is born again? Every single person has been brought to Christ?" That's the only way they can be born again. There's only one place that that can be true. At the end of the tribulation period, we are told that God is going to come back, and the Lord Jesus Christ is going to act as judge over the gentile nations. He will bring one gentile nation after another before Him, and He will have His angels weed out, from among those gentiles, those who, during the tribulation, trusted in Christ as Savior as a result of listening to the 144,000 evangelists and others who are witnessing at the time.

The saved people are put aside in one group. All those who rejected Christ are put in another category. They are called goats. The goats are put to death. The sheep are taken alive into the millennium. He then brings the Jewish nation before Him; sends the angels going through; and, Jeremiah says that He jerks out all the rebels. He pulls out all the Jews who are alive at that point at the end of the seven-year tribulation period. He pulls all those Jews out who have rebelled against Jesus Christ (who would not accept Him), and He puts them in a category called rebels. He pulls all those who did they believe, and who have trusted, and many of them have suffered under the antichrist. He puts them aside. They are now His people. The rebels are taken out, and they are put to death. His people are sent into the millennium.

The Millennium

So, this distinction will be fully executed at the beginning of the millennium. The word "Israel" always means the Jewish people. "All Israel" is a way of referring to the nation as a whole. The Jews as a nation today have been broken off from the tree of blessing. They are totally rejected by God. But in the future, the nation is going to be restored to divine blessings. The national rejection of the Jews did not include the rejection of every individual Jew. When the nation was rejected, some Jews were saved. In like manner, the national restoration of the Jews to salvation will not include every individual Jew. Some Jews at that time will be unsaved. They will be put to death. They will not be added to the nation.

It is obviously self-evident that all elect Jews will be saved. That's not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying more than that. He's saying that the Jews as a nation, at some point, are going to be saved. It stress again that God has a future for the Jewish people apart from the church – the national restoration to the olive tree of blessing, apart from the church. "As it is written, all Israel shall be saved."

Then, he says, "Just as it is written." This is referring to an Old Testament passage. Actually, he's quoting a combination of Isaiah 59:20-21 and Isaiah 27:9. Paul picks two statements from those Scriptures, and he puts it together, and he makes a statement: "Out of Zion (which refers to the Jewish people) there shall come a Deliverer." The Greek word is "hruomai." This is someone who saves another from something. It refers here to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is going to come as Israel's Messiah Savior in order to save the people. He did that. He came to do that at His First Coming. That's what He did. He provided a basis for the Jews to be saved. Then he says that something else is going to happen.

As you read verse 26, connect the statement, "And so all Israel will be saved" with the statement "There shall come out of Zion a Deliverer." That's how all Israel as a nation is going to be saved, because this Deliverer is going to come. Salvation can only be secured through Jesus Christ alone.

So, what's going to happen when He comes? At that point, He's going to do something for the Jews. It says that: "He's going to turn them away from ungodliness." The Greek word is "apostrepho." This word means "to change your direction." Here, the direction of the Jews is going to be turned back to Jesus Christ. They're going to be brought, at some future point, into salvation. And when is this going to be done? It's going to be done when, suddenly, Jesus Christ returns, and the Jewish people, as a nation, realize the terrible mistake they have made in rejecting Jesus of Nazareth as their Savior.

This has been referred to in the Old Testament, for example, in Isaiah 66:7-9: "Before she travailed, she brought forth. Before her pain came, she was delivered of a Man Child." Here, in symbolic language, is the return of the Jews to their Messiah Savior, Jesus Chris. It's going to be so quick, that it's going to be like a woman who says, "I think I've come to my full term." And all of a sudden, because she has felt any labor pains, there's a crying to the baby. That's astounding. How could that happen so quickly – no pains, and here's the baby? Before she even realizes, the child is born? "Who has heard such a thing?" The prophet says, "When has such a thing ever happened. Who has seen such a thing" Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travails, she brought forth her children." As soon as the Jews came to the time of Jacob's trouble. The Bible describes the tribulation as Jacob's trouble. As soon as they came to that first feeling of real pain: "'Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth?' says the Lord? Shall I cause to bring forth and shut the womb?' says your God?'" God says, "Shall I bring you to the point of delivery, and not bring you through?" And His point is, "yes, I will bring you through."

What will be the response of the Jews? Zechariah 12:10 tells us how they will be born as a nation. God says, "In I will pour upon the house of David, the Jewish people, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication." They're going to be born again. "And they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced. And they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and should be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Put those passages of Isaiah together: a quick birth; with the Jews seeing Jesus Christ, and then breaking down in tears, realizing the terrible mistake they've made; and, having the agonies and the sorrow like someone who has lost a firstborn son, and the travail that they realize. What are they crying for? Well, they've lost a great deal. They've lost millions of Jews into hell, because they, as a nation, rejected Jesus Christ.

So, when Paul says, "The Deliverer is going to come. He's going to turn away ungodliness from Zion," ungodliness means their lost condition. The Jews think they are pious without Jesus Christ, but God says, "They are ungodly with Him." So, He's going to remove them. And He's going to remove this ungodliness this from Jacob, which refers to the Jewish people.

Now, in verse 27, which we should look at next time, we will see that there is a reason why God has to be faithful, and why God cannot fail to create a Jewish, born-again nation – not just a Jewish nation. That is already existing– in unbelief. But God is going to make a born-again Jewish nation where you can't meet anybody on the street; you can't meet anybody shopping; and, you can't visit in anybody's home who is not already born again. Every single person is a believer. The Jews have been, and are, a very ungodly people relative to Jesus Christ.

We close today with a statement in 1 Thessalonians 2:14, where the apostle Paul was indicating just how ungodly is the attitude of the Jews toward Jesus Christ. What Paul points out in 1 Thessalonians 2:14 is that these Jews were not, in his day, satisfied just to reject Jesus Christ. They turned heaven and earth to see that nobody else among the gentiles would have the information about Jesus Christ to trust in Him. 1 Thessalonians 2:14: "For you, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. For you also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews; who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us. And they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the gentiles, that they might be saved; to fill up their sins always, for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." Do I need to describe to you what kind of wrath of God has come to the uttermost for the Jews?

If you take the trouble to read of what really took place in our own era during World War II in Nazi Germany, you will see the wrath to the uttermost that the Jewish people suffered all over Europe. These Jews were ungodly. They not only wanted to stop the apostle Paul; throw roadblocks in his work; deal him all the misery they could; and, strip him of all the means of support and the avenues of ministry that were available to him. But they wanted to do everything they could to keep the gentiles, Paul says, from hearing as well. That's how low they had become. That's how ungodly they had become. And it is that which Paul is indicating God is going to remove from the Jewish people.

Paul quotes these biblical statements to point out that the deliverance promised to the Jews included more than individual Jews would be saved, but that the conversion would be a whole nation. The Jews who are now an ungodly people, because they reject Christ, toward whom our sympathy goes, and to whom we must minister, are also the same people that are going to be brought into super blessing someday, when they as a nation, turn to Jesus Christ, and they're born again. What they need, you and I as gentiles need too. You're just a churchy person; if you're just a nice moral person; and, if you are without Christ, you are as ungodly in God's sight as those Jews. The escape; the solution; and, the protection you need to trust in Christ as your Savior, as the Jews must do, in order that they might be saved. And trusting in Him means abandoning all your human efforts. You have not done that, you should this day.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1988

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