ReGrafted

We are told in 1 Timothy to rightly divide the word of truth. Hold on a second. There it is. To rightly divide the word of truth. And this is a really good spot to explain what that means. The Bible, the whole thing, is written for everybody to read, but portions of it are specific to certain people, exclusively, and not to the exclusion of others, but as an example. The Old Testament is written pretty much to the Jewish nation, especially from Abraham on.

And as we've learned in the last few weeks, the discussion has little to do with the Gentiles other than they were outside. So here we come, we study, we pick up the book of Romans, what, a couple of years ago now? And we do the first eight chapters of Romans, and what we learn is is that the whole focus there, it's written to the world of lost men, and that salvation is available And it is spelled out what and who salvation is and how it's provided free by grace. But then, and it's written, as it moves along, it gets more focused in on those who are believers, which we would call the church. and there's incredible glorious promises and truths that have to do with the church and things that God has done to those and for those who believe. Romans 6, Romans 7, especially Romans 8. But when we get to Romans 9, 10, and 11, the focus has changed. Now we're, the writer, Paul, is gonna deal with an interesting issue.

And the issue is, if all of this wonderful blessing that the Gentiles and Jews have now been made available to them through the work of Christ on the cross, you know, God, you made a lot of promises to those Jews. What are you gonna do about those? And in our society, in our Christian society, there is a whole form of thinking that God has just taken the Jewish nation and flushed them. Or if you want to be nice about it, sucked them into the church. And so the Jewish nation continues sort of spiritually through the church.

Well, as we studied 9, 10, 11, we find out, well, that isn't true. We find that the Jewish nation and the promises made to them through Abraham and others, God intends to keep every single one of those. And he isn't, like he says in 10, has God totally abandoned Israel? Answer, no way. Absolutely not.

So as we come down now to chapter 11, we're finding out that, and we've said this for the last several weeks, that 11 speaks to Gentiles and to Jews. There's absolutely no verse that speaks to the church. And it's so important for us to understand that, even though, like today, we're gonna talk a lot about the church. But it's really interesting, and it makes these verses, like Jim says, kinda complicated. But when you realize that in chapter 11, he's talking to Gentiles, and to Jews, but mostly Gentiles.

Well, who are they? They're everybody who isn't a Jew, whether they're saved or unsaved, doesn't matter. He's talking to Gentiles because they have been brought into a place of favor from God's perspective, which they never had before, never had. God only dealt with humanity from Abraham on through the Jewish nation.

And if you as a Gentile wanted to be saved, you better find a Jew somewhere who will instruct you and take you to Jerusalem and get you into temple services. Because that was it. So if you happen to live somewhere outside Israel, or never even heard of Israel, you're a Gentile and you're lost. Having said that, in the discussion that we're having now, we're talking about the olive tree.

And the olive tree we've discovered is made up of the promises that God made to Israel through Abraham. God made to Israel through Abraham, to Israel, not to Gentiles. But because the Jews didn't believe him, and we found out that the most important thing from God's perspective that every human being do is to just believe him, we find out that the Jews have been set aside And that favorable position and the blessings that were given to the Jews through Abraham now have gone to the Gentiles. So when we start out with verse 21, we've come down to the point where Paul says, if God did not spare the natural branches, who are they? They are the Jews.

He will not spare you either again. You have to follow the logic here because we are not talking about Christian salvation. We're not talking about that. It's really important because we live in a time when there are denominations that wanna take these verses and tell you that this is you and you could lose your salvation based on this.

So, what we're really learning here is the principles that the Jews were familiar with in the Old Testament, and the reasoning tells us that God has a way that he governs. And he maintains his governance with single force. The Jews springing from Abraham, the one first chosen and called out to have promises in his line had been the natural trunk and the branches of the olive tree. This isn't Christianity, I'm gonna keep saying that. And here the Gentiles at the same time are termed a wild olive trees growing out who knows where, but not in the realm of the promises to Abraham. But if God's gonna have a tree, and he's gonna have branches in it, all those branches in there have to be in keeping with the root.

They've gotta be part of these promises. So what happens? The Jews were not, they stopped believing him, especially about their Messiah. And what happened to him? He judged them, and he set them aside. He didn't totally turn his back on them, but he set them aside. And that setting aside turns out to be a blessing for the Gentiles.

Not talking about the church, the body of Christ. We don't see here a Jew and Gentile brought into one new man, one body in Christ, united to Christ in heaven, where there is neither Jew or Gentile, and not the mystery hidden from the ages and generations. We're not talking about that.

We do see here, the olive tree of promise. Subsisting out of Abraham in possession of the promise, and now some Jews were broken off from those promises, using the metaphor of an olive tree, that place of promise where they had, why? Because they didn't believe. Most important issue between any human being and God is to believe in. The Gentile nations are now included in earthly promises. And by the way, all the promises made to Abraham were earthly, all of them. Earthly promises resident in Abraham could now avail themselves as nations to be the receivers of the promises made to Abraham.

And why did that happen? Because God set the Jews aside because they didn't believe him. He said, well, if I'm gonna set you aside, I'm gonna bring the Gentiles in. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to make them jealous and that they would come back to him.

So the root remains the same in the tree where the Jews were and the Gentiles grafted in among them and they were not natural branches but only had their standing by faith. So if a Gentile as standing within the root. How does he get that standing and maintain it? By faith alone, that's how he gets it.

So last week we concluded that the Gentiles in general have benefited by Israel's unbelief and transgressions. I think that's a foregone conclusion. Gentile believers are now the focal point of God's blessing and mercy. That's absolutely true, look around. Since this is all by God's grace, Paul warns the Gentiles not to be conceited or arrogant about your new place of favor.

Because one day, when the last Gentile is saved, what's gonna happen? God's program for the historical process will again focus on Israel. When the Lord takes the church out of here, where does his focus go on the earth? At that point, it goes right back to Israel. It's really cool how God is doing this.

So verse 22 tells us, it's kind of interesting, behold, or pay attention to, then, the kindness and severity of God to those who fell. Severity. But to you, Gentiles, God's kindness, if you continue in his kindness, otherwise you also will be cut off. Warning to the Gentiles. Not the church, Gentiles. Now if you remember, in studying the Gospels, excuse me, The Lord Jesus took the 12 disciples and he said, I want you to go and evangelize. Well, where do I want you to go? To the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Only place.

Go not into the way of the Gentiles and don't enter into any city of the Samaritans. Only Jews. That was his instructions in Matthew 10. He had come to minister as a minister of the circumcision to his own people. But here comes the cross. They rejected their Messiah. They crucified him. He dies and he's resurrected.

Now what? He says to, in Mark 16, go ye to all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. See the difference? I mean, the difference is right there. This is after the resurrection, after they had rejected their Messiah. He said in Acts 1, you shall be witnesses both in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and unto the other most parts of the earth. So now the favor or the blessings of Abraham, starting in Abraham, don't go to the house of Israel at all now, it goes out to the whole world.

So kindness and severity. Kindness just means goodness, compassion. And severity means a nature that which is cut off or abrupt like a cliff or rough. Thayer says it speaks of severity. And then if, the if here is the particle of hypothetical condition. If you remain in the goodness. So what is he saying here? If you remain in God's kindness, he will continue to bless you. But if you do what the Jews did, not believe him, then you're gonna come under those that are in the cutoff position, is maybe the best way to say it.

So this was God's goodness towards Gentile believers. All the Gentiles, They were no longer called dogs. You remember the Jews called them dogs. You didn't think they were even worthy of being in the same room with them, as contrasted with the favored race of Israel. There's a complete change now in the relationship of Gentiles as such towards God. They were put into a place of privilege, an opportunity of divine blessing, an acceptable time, a day of salvation, God's goodness was extended to them, never was before. So now Gentiles, they're ambassadors for God and say any word to the worst heathen, anybody, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Has nothing to do with your heritage at all now. Oops, missed that one. So that's God's divine goodness. Now, the Jew lost their standing, why?

They had come to believe that their position of favor, I use the word indefectible, meaning it wasn't subject to decay, it lasted, it was flawless and independent of moral conditions. They thought that once they had this position in the promises of Abraham, that meant that they could not ever lose, and where were they headed? The kingdom.

Well, what did the Lord Jesus tell Nicodemus? Unless a man's born again, you'll never see the kingdom of God, and you won't enter into it. That was a big surprise to him, because he's a Jew, he's a Pharisee, he's got all the credentials. Does he believe God?

That's the issue. So if a Gentile commit the same mistake, they're gonna incur the same penalty that the Jews did. In other words, they stop believing God. They get cut off. They get cut out of the trunk. Now, it doesn't mean a Gentile who is saved in the body of Christ loses his salvation. He just moves out of the position of favor. Does that make sense? I hope it does.

Continue or remain and to abide we're constantly told by the Lord Jesus. He tells his disciples just to abide in me in other words Continue to just trust me The word speaks of a position in and relationship to God's goodness I trust him for his goodness It's often used Of one abiding in a home as a guest I As it speaks of friendship, companionship, and intercourse, it is the attitude of the Gentile towards the Jew and towards the benevolent kindness of God, including him in salvation, offered to the Jew, to which the apostle has referenced in his context by the use of the word, this word, Kenneth Weiss said that. So maybe in translation, it just means if you believe God, just stay there.

A man of exercise conscience, Gentile or Jew, or even of ordinary knowledge of the New Testament, he cannot look at the Gentile profession of Christ in any direction and firmly and seriously say that the Gentiles have continued in God's goodness. And if not, the sentence is cutting out the Gentiles as of old to the Jews. And I'm gonna talk more about that as we go along here in a minute. The Gentiles in general have not maintained their position. They haven't believed God. So what happened when they did believe God early on? The Holy Spirit had been given to them at Pentecost.

And it wasn't long after that that Peter goes down to Cornelius' house and he finds out that, oh my goodness, God really does intend to save the Gentiles. That was a big surprise to him. because he was a Jew, and in his mind, the Jews were the only ones that got the favor of God. And then right after that, you find that Barnabas and Saul and Silas and Timothy and the rest of them, what are they doing? They're going out on missionary trips, and they're spreading this gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentile world. Now granted, Paul starts out by going to synagogues, but that's only because he had an audience there. So they went out and preached the gospel of grace to the Gentile world. So here's the difference between the whole Jewish system and what these men preached.

You don't need a religion now. You have Christ. I hope you can see there's a difference between religion and the person of Christ. You don't need a temple. You don't need a big building to assemble in because you're the temple. Individual believers. or the temple, that's what Stephen railed on the Sanhedrin about and what's the reward he got for telling them that? They stoned him. You don't need a ritual. They had the Holy Spirit and they worshiped by hymn instead of by forms. You don't need a special priesthood. Every single believer We're alike as priests. Every one of us can approach God at any time without any sort of smoke and mirrors or anything like that. We can draw near.

Why? Because we are under the shed blood of the Lord Jesus. And as a matter of fact, that's what God really wants. Christ himself over the house of God, he leads our worship. He's the great high priest in heaven. We have unlimited total access to the God of the universe anytime.

There's no need now to set up a system of I've got to earn or merit my access. They were in Christ already. We spent a lot of time here talking about this one little phrase, in Christ. What does it mean? to be in Him. Well, one of the things it means is that you have all the privileges that He has because you're in Him. You're accepted in Him, made the very righteousness of God Himself in Him.

That's what they're preaching. That's a whole different thing than the Jewish system. So if they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. This verse almost double speaks. What it really says, if the Jews stop their unbelief and begin to believe again, what happens to them? They get grafted in again. I think he could have said it simpler than that.

So the Gentiles will be cut off from that place of divine privilege which they have now. Now, it's almost like every time a Jew goes out, a Gentile goes in. And now every time a Gentile goes out, a believing Jew gets plugged back in. And which Israel nationally has lost, and keep in mind this, we're talking national Israel. And Israel will be restored to the place of privilege as they were before. And as we've talked about in previous Sundays, when that day happens, it's going to be a glorious day. Cutting off does not mean the individual Gentiles cannot be saved. That's not what it means. It means you're out of the umbrella of promise. But as in the Old Testament and in Matthew and Mark, Israel will be honored at that time as the center and the spring of divine blessing on earth. On earth, divine blessing.

The Gentiles becoming again subordinate to Israel as to spiritual things, having again, they'll have to go up to Jerusalem to worship Jehovah. In the millennial kingdom, the Jews will be in charge, and if a Gentile wants to see Jesus, they're gonna have to go through the Jews, which means there'll be a temple, and all of that'll be in play. So if the Jew gives up their unbelief, they will be incorporated again in the true people of God. Again, we're not talking about the church.

And this is exactly what will take place at the second advent when the Lord comes. All of Israel will be saved, all of them. Israel as a nation will, in the sovereign grace of God, be regenerated, filled with the spirit to become again the channel through which God will operate for a thousand years to bring salvation to a Christ-rejecting world. They're gonna finally do the job that God called them through Abraham to do.

So Romans 11.25 tells us that the church, the body of Christ, will of course have been translated to heaven before this order of things comes in, called the fullness of the Gentiles. The visible, this is from William Newell. I thought this was, and I'll show the last part. Oops, that's not on there. I've studied some in Newell this last week about what's going on with organized religion.

And he wrote in 1937, so it gives you an idea that a lot of things don't change, they just get worse. The visible organized church on earth today, 1937, is for the most part modernistic and that the rapture will be set aside in favor of Israel, which will be restored as the final channel through which God will work to bring the good news of salvation to the human race. What does he mean by that? That the church being modernistic? He's talking about the denominations. I think that's what he's talking about.

And if you know anything about any denominations that have ever been in one, you wonder, where is the truth? In this sense, the Gentiles will be cut off, as Israel was in AD 70, and for the same reason, failure to function as the means through which God works for salvation for the sinners. It is now a common thought, and you know, all you have to do is look around, that the Jews were God's ancient people, that now the Gentiles are God's favorite people. Have the Jews ever stopped being God's favorite people? No, they never have.

It's of great importance, though, to avoid confounding the continuous line of inheritance of the promises on earth, the olive tree, the mystery of Christ and the church where all is new and it's above nature. In other words, it's not earthly. Don't get those two confused. There's no breaking off of members in the body of Christ, none. Nor is a Jew a natural limb any more than a Gentile is. If you're in Christ, you're a brand new type of creature, a new man. All is heavenly grace and entirely distinct from a system of administered promises, which began with Abraham, the first fruit.

It's not now a question of saving grace here, but of earthly responsibility according to the respective testimony that God gave earthly people to do. Excuse me. Boy, I sound like the mic went out. First he gave that responsibility to Israel, and next he put it into Christendom.

And neither one of them have responded like he would have them. At the rapture, you have to ask yourself, will the olive tree be cut down? Will they burn it up? Will it be gone? No way. any more than in the future, any more in the future than it would have been in the past where God set them aside.

In reverse, the judgment of the Gentile branches makes way for the grafting in of the Jews, the regrafting in, for they will no longer abide in unbelief. And God is able to graft them in again. It is their own olive tree, which God never forgets. And the Gentiles should always remember that they are God's own olive tree.

Thus, we all may and should clearly see the distinction of the responsibility of the creatures. We don't like this word responsibility, those of us that live under grace. But Israel had a responsibility. Christendom has a responsibility. And from our eternal elect position, saved by grace, we have a responsibility. We're ambassadors of the reconciliation. So ask yourself this question. Have the Gentiles continued in God's goodness? How have they done? Or if the Gentiles have not so continued, God's severity must be shown to them as it was shown to Israel. So what's the record?

It's pretty dismal. Am I running over time? I can cut it off somewhere and pick it up next week. You guys get hungry, I know we're having a... What's the record? First we see the sending out of the gospel after 2,000 years, much of the human race knows nothing about Christ. And I got to thinking about this, and we always think about, oh, get on the boat and go to Africa, or go to Papua, New Guinea. How about Denver, Colorado? How about New York City? How about Dallas, Texas? How about Los Angeles, California? The most fertile, fertile missionary ground on the whole planet is right here in this country. There are even other countries who are sending missionaries to the United States. That should make us jealous, like the Jews.

Then as to salvation by grace preached to the lost men apart from the law and from ordinance, we see instead good character has been preached. And the way of acceptance and simple table of the Lord is one of those holy mysteries. Baptism, he had one here last week. Instead of a glad confession of a known Savior, and that's what Evan was doing, he was demonstrating what had already happened to him, it's relied on as a means of regeneration.

Can't find that in God's word. Instead of simply gathering together like they did at the beginning unto the name of the Lord Jesus, relying on the presence of the Holy Spirit, what do we see? Great Judeo-Pagan temples and elaborate services. My skin crawls every time I hear the term Judeo-Christian. What is that? earthly religion is what it is. Instead of free, general, common priesthood of believers in the fellowship of prayer and faith as the Apostles' days, we see thousands upon thousands professing Christians who have never prayed, nor praise openly assembly of his saints, Myriads who do not have even the assurance of salvation, though Christ who bore sin for them has been received up into heaven on high.

Contrast this in Acts 2.42, where Luke says, they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship in the breaking of bread and prayer. What else do you need? We see general In general, horrible idolatry in a Greek church and a Roman church. One of the things that just, I love going to Italy with everybody a couple of years ago, but boy, the religion in that place is creepy.

These huge buildings with tremendous earthly art in them have nothing to do with Christ, nothing. I termed them the ABC churches, anything but Christ. Instead of preaching the word of the cross, the people have a great big cross up. Just tell them what it is. We see great state churches. Every European countries, all of them have a state church. We've got a national cathedral. What is that?

A thing unknown and impossible in scripture. We see professing Christians divided into denominations, each with their own program, and ignoring Paul's words of worshiping God in the spirit and truth, and not all walking in the consciousness of just one body. Now we gotta get divided up. Indeed, instead of unity of the spirit, they're ready, they're frog. They are ready to establish horrible outward earthly union of all professing Christians, modernist Jews, all sorts of religionists, the World Council of Churches.

See if you can find some good doctrine in there. Newell wrote that in 1937. Scary, that's a hundred years ago, almost. All that God commits to men seem to follow a downward course of declension. This was true of Israel. It's true even of the Gentile authority when you study history, the men of iron, the men of clay. It's true in the professing Christian church. working in a pure meal.

I'm going to have to stop. I can't talk anymore. If it's all right with you, I'll pick up there next week because we've got to continue on. So let's stop right there because my voice isn't going to make it. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you how incredible your grace is towards us. We recognize that we live under your grace. And the one most important thing to you is the fact that we just believe you, and we do. And we pray in your son's name, amen.