Last time in Romans, we saw how Israel is presently in unbelief. They have sought their own righteousness, and have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God is by faith, and it is near in our mouths and in our hearts. Its greatest evidence is that it confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, even in the face of persecution. I also expounded on this topic more in a separate post. The Jews have been given the good news, but have rejected it. So, the Lord is provoking them to jealousy by bringing salvation to the Gentiles. He ended with a quote from Isaiah that the Lord had stretched out His hands to a disobedient and contrary people.
If the Jews are a disobedient and contrary people, has God cast them away? Paul, again, answers his own question with, “Certainly not!” If He had, then Paul would not be a Christian, because Paul was a Jew, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Israel is the only nation that God has foreknown Amos 3:2, and as He says in Jeremiah, “If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the Lord.” (Jer 31:37)
Paul then references Elijah who, after killing all the prophets of Baal, flees from Jezebel into the wilderness. Elijah complained to the Lord that Israel had killed His prophets, torn down His altars, he was the only one left, and they were seeking to kill him too. However, the Lord responded to him, “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” In this day and age where it can be easy to think we are the only ones who are staying on the straight and narrow path, we can be sure God still has a remnant. This remnant is according to the election of grace. There have always been Jews throughout history who have accepted the Gospel; in fact, the early Church started with only Jews. This is yet another proof God has not cast away His people. This election is not of works, because none of us, Jew or Gentile, are deserving of this grace. Paul seems a bit redundant in verse six, and I believe his purpose was to make a point. So many people cannot simply accept the grace of God, but attempt to add to it by some sort of work they do. You can’t have it both ways, we operate under grace, or we operate under works. Since the latter is impossible, we should eagerly and willingly accept the former.
Israel has not obtained what it seeks, except for those who are the elect, and the rest were blinded. The word for blinded here means to become hardened or callused. Paul goes on to quote from Isaiah 29 who spoke of God giving them a spirit of stupor so that they did not have eyes to see or ears to hear. David prayed in Psalm 69 that their table (their sitting and feasting comfortably) would become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recompense to them. He prayed that their eyes would be darkened so they could not see, and that they would bow down their backs always.
This may seem harsh that God would give them over to a spiritual stupor, but Israel has been hardened or callused to the Gospel because of their rejection of Jesus as their Messiah. If we recall when Jesus was on trial, all the people answered Pilate, “His blood be on us and on our children.” God still loves His people and has a plan for them, but you just cannot say something like that without there being consequences.
Again, we see Israel hardening themselves, and God hardening them. This will happen to many during the Tribulation. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thes 2:10-12)
Another part of this is God’s punishment on the nation by causing them to be dispersed. On His triumphal entry, Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and said, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Lk 19:42-44) The Messiah had come down to Earth, lived among them for almost His entire life, ministered to them for over three years, and then presented Himself as King to the nation. Hundreds of years earlier, the angel Gabriel had appeared to Daniel to give him a prophecy concerning their coming Messiah: “Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times. And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined.” (Dan 9:24-26) In the Old Testament a week is commonly used to refer to a period of seven years. So, from the command to restore and build Jerusalem, there would be a period of 69 weeks (483 years), and after these 69 weeks, the Messiah would be cut off. We know from history this command to restore and build Jerusalem came on March 14, 445 B.C. by Artaxerxes Longimanus, and took place under the leadership of Nehemiah. Using a Jewish calendar that consists of 360-day years, this translates into 173,880 days. When counting 173,880 days from the decree by Artaxerxes, this comes out to April 6, 32 A.D. On the very day, guess who rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey? “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” (Zechariah 9:9) Jesus Christ presented Himself as King on the very day that the angel had predicted. In other words, Gabriel’s margin of error was zero. In my opinion, this is one of the most astounding prophecies in the entire Bible. The Jews (especially the religious leaders) should have known better from these two prophecies in Daniel and Zechariah alone, but according to gotquestions.org, Jesus conservatively fulfilled at least 300 prophecies during His earthly ministry. That’s an incredible testimony, folks! They stumbled at the Stumbling Stone because they did not come to God by faith as mankind has always had to do. This resulted in the Diaspora in which Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in 70 A.D., and the Jews were dispersed throughout the nations for the last 2,000 years. This was predicted by Moses in Deuteronomy 28:64-67 and Deuteronomy 31:17-18, and by Jesus in Luke 21:24. However, the Lord promised to bring them back again as seen in Jeremiah 31:7-8, Isaiah 43:5-7, and in Isaiah 66:8. This began happening after WWI., but really picked up in May of 1948 when Israel became a nation again. The horrific events of the Holocaust moved the world to sympathize with the Jewish people, and to give them a homeland to return to.
I believe it is important to point out here that God’s love for His people does not cause Him to gloss over their sins. If the Lord does not gloss over their sins, then we should not either. They are back in their land, but the majority are there in unbelief. As a result, it is largely a secular society with much of the same immoral practices that go on in our own country. If you speak with a Jewish person today about the Gospel, there really is a blindness or hardness there in many of them. In the conversations I have had with Jewish people, some do not even believe their own Scriptures. The Lord will fix this problem with one more major trial, and it is called the Tribulation. It is unfortunate this will be what it takes, but one of the main reasons for the Tribulation is to wake up the Jewish people to the fact that Jesus is their Messiah.
So then, the nation is being disciplined by God because of their rejection of His Son, but as we will see in the remainder of the chapter, they will be restored. This restoration in spite of Israel’s failures and rejection of the Lord will make it all the more glorious.
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