Chapter 11:1-10
1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, 3 ‘Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life’? 4 But what does the divine response say to him? ‘I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ 5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
“6 And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.7 What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. 8 Just as it is written:
“God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, To this very day.’ 9 And David says: ‘Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recompense to them. 10 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see, and bow down their back always.’”
We live in tumultuous times. Just yesterday I was speaking with a colleague at my workplace, and we were discussing how the last 6 months have been one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the world. We have men like Bezos whose worth have just about doubled in the past 6 months (to about 200 Billion Dollars) while smaller companies are still struggling, and many are going out of business. In my little town, there are countless empty storefronts that will never come back. Even very large restaurant chains, some who have been around for 30+ years, have gone under in this COVID debacle.
It is not my intention in this lesson to get into that, but just think that as we move ahead and the push to globalism is shoved down our throats, it will be easier to control businesses if the vast majority are run by a small group of persons. It will be easier to make laws that restrict the smaller stores if the bigger stores own everything. Soon all of our food, medicine, clothing and just about everything we buy will be held in the hands of an oligopoly, and they will be controlled by evil men who are not interested in the individual customer but serve a ‘bigger’ vision.
I was speaking to a Russian couple in my office who have been in Canada for almost 3 years, and they were astonished at the fact that it is very hard to pay for anything with cash. They have the money, but many places will not take more than a few thousand in cash. The legal paperwork and the hoops one must jump through to prove the chain of ownership is circus-like. They blurted out to me that this is all about control. They knew what that was like growing up in Russia, and they were astonished to see it here in North America.
We are like the frog in the pot; the government is gradually turning up the temperature, and we are boiling to death very, very slowly. It would be easy for us to think that the world system is winning, they have the upper hand, and they are about to ‘checkmate’ our King. But nothing could be further from the truth. God’s not dead, and soon He will come out roaring like a Lion.
In the passage above, there are some stark declarations that we will deal with today. I hope to bring some enlightenment and some peace into some troubled lives today. I pray that some light will shine in your darkness and that you will realize that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train but Jesus coming to clear this mess up.
- God is not done with Israel, verses 1-2
There is a devilish doctrine meandering among churches, even presumably conservative churches, that God is done with Israel. Many of the churches that teach this doctrine are Calvinist-leaning, at least here in Southern Ontario. They do not believe that everyone can be saved, and as such, they have written off Israel and teach, erroneously, that the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not transferred to the New Testament church.
Paul calls this very thought into question in the first two verses of Romans 11: Is God done with Israel? No, He is not. And I am proof of that; I am an Israelite. If God was done with Israel, why am I saved? Paul was the main apostle to the Gentile peoples of most of known Europe, but he was a Jew and he knew that he was God’s reminder that the Jews were not forgotten and cast aside forever. I know some Jews who are saved. They have seen and understood that Jesus is the Messiah, and they have called on Him as Savior. There are entire organizations like Jews for Jesus whose sole job is to take the Gospel of Jesus to the persons of Israel. They have a unique perspective as Jews on how to share the Gospel to their people.
In Romans 11:2, Paul clearly states that God has not cast away His people. How much clearer can one be? Later in this chapter, Paul would write in verse 29 that the ‘gifts of God and His promises are irrevocable.’ God made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, a covenant that Abraham slept through, and God made the covenant to Abraham using Himself only as the giver and the receiver. Thus, this covenant will never expire since the covenant expires at the death of one of the participants. God will never die (Genesis 15: 8-21).
Here we are 2,000 years later, and there are still Jews being saved, still Jews coming to the recognition of who the Messiah is and calling on Him for salvation. A literal reading of the book of Revelation will reveal that God is not done with Israel and will call 144,000 Jewish men to be missionaries to the lost Jews around the world. Then once we get out of chapter 4, the New Testament church is never mentioned again, yet we see saints in the Tribulation period, we see that the whole world is focused on Jerusalem, and the anti-Christ himself will invade and occupy Jerusalem for a period of time. The future events of the end are about Israel, at least the events that take place here on earth.
Sadly, the Jews rejected their Messiah, and for a period of time their eyes have been darkened, but that is for our benefit; we see the Messiah.
- God will never be outplayed by Satan, verse 2-5
There is a story from 1 Kings 19 where Elijah has run away from Jezebel and is cowering in fear by a river. There he falls into a bit of a pity party and asks God to take his life as he is the only one left in Israel who is serving the Lord. But God makes it clear that He had more than 7,000 other men who had not worshipped a false god. This seemed to be an eye-opener to the prophet. He was so fixed on Jezebel and her evils ways that it took his eyes off the fact that more than 7,000 other men were serving the Lord faithfully.
This is how it can be today; we see the globalists on TV every day, we see the news and hear of the issues, and we can think that we have lost the battle. We are outnumbered and are being outplayed. But nothing could be further from the truth. God will not be outplayed and outmaneuvered by Satan.
Right now, there are faithful missionaries and countless churches that are doing all they can to share the Gospel. Soon, God will send out 144,000 dedicated missionaries to preach the Gospel to the Jews; we find this in Revelation 7:1-17. There are currently over 7.5 billion people on the planet, and when we look at the people who have gone before, plus the ones that are saved now, plus the ones who will see Jesus in the Millennial Kingdom and be saved, there will be billions upon billions who will be saved, and Satan is going to be outplayed. He will come to the end of himself, and he too will one day call Jesus Lord. It is Satan’s kingdom that will be destroyed, his power eviscerated and his end sure. In the end, there will be one eternal ruler, Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords. His kingdom is forever, and His reign is forever as well.
Don’t be dismayed; any perceived victories by the kingdom of darkness and his minions here on earth are temporary. God is allowing them a false sense of winning and a sense of victory that will embolden them to defy God more and more as they try to create a perfect world without Jesus. They will fail miserably. Their presumption that man is good will be their end; they are not even good themselves. They are evil and in need of redemption.
There is no Utopia without Jesus and salvation. But for now, we are the ones who benefit from the temporary blindness of the Jews. We Gentiles are being saved but soon, sooner than we all think, the Gentile age will come to an end and God will revert to dealing spiritually with the Jews. They will be saved and there will be billions of Gentiles killed in the Tribulation. Those Gentiles who enter the Tribulation having rejected Jesus will die horribly in ways that God has told us will be absolutely amazing. The Revelation makes Hollywood look like they are amateurs in creating ways to die.
Repent; today is the day of salvation. We don’t hear much today about the wrath of God. Not many preachers want to talk about Hell, sin and eternal fires. But the Bible says this in Hebrews 10:31, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.” We will all meet the Lord Jesus one day; we will either meet him at the Bema Mercy seat or the Great White Throne judgment. Where will you meet Him? The choice is yours.
God bless you,
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
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