Rejected His People？ - Part 4

I will assert with six arguments in this chapter. So if you think you need more arguments, I hope you stay around to get them. Verse 15, verse 16, verse 24, verse 25, verse 28, verse 31. These are all arguments for this point, that ethnic Israel taken as a whole, as a corporate entity alive in any generation, is what God says, I have not abandoned that reality. Now, let's connect it with foreknowing. Verse 2, God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. The point of saying that is to provide a foundation for the certainty of the non-rejection. I haven't rejected them, they're foreknown. So there's an argument here going on. There's a basis, there's a support here. I haven't rejected them, I foreknew them. I can't reject them, I foreknew them. If He foreknew them, He cannot reject them. That's the argument. So what does it mean that He foreknew them? What is that? The clearest place in the Bible where God's knowing of the corporate entity called Israel alive at any given time is Amos chapter 3, verse 2. And it goes like this, You only have I known of all the families of the earth, known. You, Israel, only have I known. So centuries later you speak of foreknowing, and when you ask, is this family that He knew rejected? He says, no, I foreknew them. I knew them once upon a time. I knew them. Almost everybody, virtually all scholars, all interpreters take Amos 3, 2 to mean, I chose them. Like a wife is known by a husband. Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore a child. Depart from me, you wicked. I never knew you, Jesus says. Knowing in the Bible at this level of knowing is not just knowing about. He knew about every people group. And when He says, you only, Israel, have I known, He means, you only have I set my eyes upon. I've made you the apple of my eye. I have freely elected you and chosen you, and I will work with you. And Paul says, God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew, meaning, if He foreknew them, if He chose them, He's not going to abandon them. The corporate reality of Israel will one day become Christian and join the church, en masse. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I'm sure you're wondering, well, what do you think is going to happen? And that's where we're going to wind up at the end of chapter 11. I don't believe there are two plans, one for Israel, one for the church. It's not my theology. I don't think it's biblical. One plan, one people of God. Right now, Jews are broken off branches, and we have been grafted in to the one people. The day will come when the natural branches will be grafted in again, and there will be one promise, one covenant, one people, Christ's people, Jew and Gentile. It will just happen to include the entirety of the people of Israel, which will be an awesome. The fact that there's a remnant, the fact that there's a remnant in Paul's mind signals the fact that he will care one day for the totality of Israel. That's the only way the argument works. He has not rejected his people. A remnant exists. And you should say, well, yeah, a remnant exists, but we're concerned about all the people. And he's going to argue, it's coming very soon, 15, 16, if there's a remnant, the whole lump of dough is going to be leavened by the remnant. If the root is holy, the whole tree is going to one day be holy. If they are natural branches, they will one day be grafted in again. If by their disobedience, mercy came to the Gentiles, then by mercy coming to the Gentiles, one day mercy will come to those who were disobedient that they might find mercy. Let me give you a confirmation of this in verse 28. You can look at it with me. 1128. There are some more breathtaking words. We say them with trembling. We say them with our faces to the ground in humility and in meekness and in love. As regards the gospel, they, that is Israel, as regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. That's not the remnant. The remnant are not enemies of God for anybody's sake. They're not enemies of God. The ones who are enemies of God are the ones who decisively, corporately disobeyed and rejected their Messiah. They are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election, and I'm equating that with foreknowledge because that's the way the argument works, as regards foreknowledge, as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. God said his favor upon the fathers. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, he made a covenant with the fathers. He bound himself to the fathers, and for their sake, he will one day bring all Israel into the seed of the fathers, Jesus Christ. And therefore, I find a confirmation here that foreknowing as the ground of our certainty that they will not be rejected is the same as being chosen by God because the word election is used here in the same argument. We speak this with trembling. I am perfectly aware that if reporters from the Minneapolis Tribune wanted to come here on a Saturday night and record these messages, they could take sentence after sentence out of here, plaster it in the paper, and call this church anti-Semitic. It may happen in the next nine months. But just be aware that you can't take sentences out of context. You can't take them out of services like that. They might arrive in the morning there in the downtown site and do the same thing. You can't take them even out of a video context. I say it with trembling when I say they are enemies of God. There's no hostility in that. There's no gloating in that. There's only brokenheartedness. There's only longing. There's only yearning. There's only praying. Oh, God, lift the veil. Oh, God, remove the hardening. Oh, God, save that they might see Jesus who loved them and gave himself for them. That's the attitude. Let me close like this. I want to try to call for an application in your own lives. I know that most of us in these rooms are Gentiles, not all, but most.