In this enlightening episode, Colin explores the profound arguments presented in Romans regarding the salvation of Israel. He delves into the cultural and spiritual significance of Israel’s existence and its role in global salvation history. By examining the divine promise that transcends human failure, Colin sheds light on how God’s covenants are both reliable and irrevocable.
So we’ve just about come to the end of Paul’s arguments for the salvation of Israel. And you may think, Colin, what was the point? I know I may have lost some of my audience by this extended review of Romans 9 through 11. Well, first of all, I’m sorry about that, and I hope it’s not the case. But it’s necessary to follow through all of Paul’s arguments if we are to get the gospel clear in our heads. But you might ask, well, so what? I mean, is Israel going to be saved or not? Or will all of them be saved or a few of them be saved? The point is, what about me? Well, first of all, we have to let go of me and go back into Scripture and find me there rather than try to bring Scripture to me and find Scripture in me. Did you get that? In other words, we find ourselves by going back into the truth of the gospel and the scriptures rather than finding ourselves by trying to bring the scriptures into my life and see what sense is made of it. Let me say from the outset that the study of the book of Romans in regard to Israel is a mess. Now, I believe it is perfectly clear what God is doing. He is saving broken people. But in doing so, he gets into the mess. I mean, the fact that Israel still exists on this planet, and I’m not talking about a political Israel. I’m talking simply about the people of God, the Jewish people of God, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The fact that they still exist on the planet, after so many centuries and a millennia or two of opposition, indicates how God saves people. If he makes a promise that he will save, if he makes a promise that in you, that is in this people, all families of the earth shall be blessed, and he fulfills it, follows it through, that is an incredible miracle. You and I are believers for two reasons. We are believers because Jesus died and rose again, and we are believers because Israel exists. You may not realize that. The truth is that the Western world is based not only upon Roman pagan culture, but upon Jewish culture. That is, the Jewish law of Ten Commandments and the fact of God being one and the fact of God being graceful to people. These truths that came through Israel came to the Western world. But God had another plan as well. Not only was Israel to bless the West, but the West was to bless Israel, because as the West came to believe in the salvation of mankind, or salvation through Jesus, whether they believed in a few or all, the fact that the West came to believe that Jesus is the Savior of all has rebounded boomeranged back on Israel. How so, you say? Because as people continued to believe that Jesus loved them in the West, and Jesus gave salvation to all who believed in him, they began to prosper. They began to see the freedom and dignity of the individual. They began to understand that Jesus died for all, and therefore all are equal. And all of this affected Western civilization, which then went back to Israel to bless it and protect it. That is what you and I have to understand, because it is all about God’s entanglement in the affairs of men, blessing one group by letting go of another group so that finally the other group gets blessed by the one that it blessed… I’ve lost myself, right? What I mean to say is that the rejection that Israel made of the Messiah led to the salvation of the Gentiles, which has boomeranged back to some degree, not wholly, of course, yet, on Israel, who see the blessings of the Christians and have taken many of those blessings on themselves. and ultimately they will come to believe. Now, that’s all by review, because I want to say something more about you and me. The salvation of Israel, I said earlier, is a mess. In other words, God entangles himself with the mess to bring people to salvation. If you were to study the history of Israel… you would say they don’t stand a chance of being saved by God. Their sins were too many. They went pagan. They failed in their mission appointed to them by God to represent Jehovah in the world. And yet God would not be denied. And in their failure, God has still revealed himself. by the crucifixion of Jesus. That was the failure of the Jewish people. They didn’t do it directly. They simply handed it over to the Romans. And I’m not blaming Israel. All humanity has crucified Christ in the long run. The point is that in the failures of Israel and the failures of the world, God’s grace is revealed. Now, this brings us to you and me, as I said earlier. If you look into the history of your life, either being a Christian or not, you do not see a clear, linear path of grace and morality, do you? If you look at your history, you see mistakes, rebellion, defeat, stupidity, repentance, coming back to God, being blessed by God and failure again and neglect and so on. And you will see chaos in your history. If you were to start to write your history… Pre-Christian history, as well as even Christian history, you would not see a linear grace line indicating everything was smooth. No, everything was chaos. And the wonder of it is, is that our God, in his love and mercy, works through our chaos. So you look to Israel, and by the way, how do you look to Israel and its history? I tell you, read it again. If you want to read 2 Kings, you will get a shocker how many kings of Israel did not walk with the Lord, set up pagan idols, even in the temple of God. and worshipped demons, and even sacrificed their children and babies to the fires of the gods Molech and Baal. And yet, and so it says in 2 Kings, by the way, that God cast them out and abandoned them. And yet, that same period of history is described in Ezekiel. And it says that God will forgive Israel for all that they have done, the whole house of Israel. And it says also that he will raise the whole house of Israel from the dead. So we’re talking about a salvation of the whole house. Now, why is that important to you and me? Because you and I have done as much damage to the kingdom of God as Israel did. And we do not deserve salvation. And yet God has atoned for all our sins in Jesus Christ to forgive us for everything we have ever done. And so we will all be resurrected. So then, when you look at your life and you see it as a pathetic and poor Christian life, and you have not followed faithfully, what do you do? Well, of course, you look to the cross. You look to God’s atoning sacrifice of your sins in Jesus Christ. But you also look to Israel. Because when you look to Israel, you see mercy abounding upon mercy, mercy after mercy through one era and another, through one century and another. And that Israel still exists and is the center of controversy in the world so many times is a miracle of God, an indication of his grace. And it is a message that says from God, as it were, As goes Israel, so goes the world. As goes Israel, so go you. As I show mercy upon Israel, so I will show mercy upon you. As I judge Israel, so I will judge you, but I will still come out with mercy finally. For it says, as we saw yesterday, for God has imprisoned all in disobedience that he might have mercy on all. And he’s demonstrating that through Israel. So don’t look at what I’m saying to you as anything political. You know I have never been political on this radio broadcast. I do not comment on political issues. And I am not commenting on political issues when I talk about Israel. I’m talking about Israel before ever the politics got in fashion, before ever the politics brought up modern issues. Politics is not the issue. The issue is, when God makes a covenant, is it conditional upon man’s obedience or Israel’s obedience? Or is it transcending all of humanity’s obedience and disobedience because God is able to trounce our unfaithfulness with his faithfulness? That’s the issue. Once you come to a conclusion about that, and the right conclusion, you know that God’s covenant promises are irrevocable. They cannot and will not be revoked. As it says here, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. That’s Romans 11, verse 29. God has made promises to this world. And in making promises to this world through Israel, He’s making promises to you. Your life may seem chaos. You may have given up on going to church because you cannot bear the hypocrisy that you feel within yourself. You’d like to believe that you can be a Christian. You would like to believe that God has mercy upon you, but your broken life, your addictions, your unfaithfulness, your sabotage of everything spiritual makes it seem utterly impossible. But I tell you, God is in the business of getting down in the dirt and wrestling with human beings in their chaos and bringing them through. What you and I need to do now, right now, is to lift our hearts up in thanks and gratitude and say, Dear God, Thank you for engineering my chaos. Thank you for allowing me to go deep down into darkness, because through that, I have hope that you are coming to me in my darkness, that you are turning that darkness into light, that you will use my darkness to draw me to you. Darkness is not apart from the gospel. It is part of the gospel because God comes to us in our darkness in Jesus Christ to bring us into the light. So get ready for future expectations and in the meantime be sure that you give thanks for God for the chaos. Thanks for listening, everyone. Colin Cook here. Listen Monday through Friday at 10 in the evening, repeated at 4 in the morning on KLT in Denver. I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
In this enlightening episode, Colin explores the profound arguments presented in Romans regarding the salvation of Israel. He delves into the cultural and spiritual significance of Israel’s existence and its role in global salvation history. By examining the divine promise that transcends human failure, Colin sheds light on how God’s covenants are both reliable and irrevocable.
