To Whom Be the Glory Forever
Romans 11:33-36
Before we get
started in Romans tonight I want to take just a couple of minutes to talk about
the Pre-Trib Rapture Conference that was held in Dallas this past week. West
Houston Bible Church and Dean Bible Ministries supplied video equipment and
other equipment to help out and we have volunteers to help out with a number of
things. We truly play a very important role in what we do to bring about this
conference.
There were
probably close to four hundred people in attendance this year. Most of the
sessions were pretty well crowded. The focus of the schedule this year was on
Israel, what the Bible teaches about Israel. I’m just going to review a little
bit how the schedule went. The first morning Dr. David Hocking, a pastor in
Southern California for many years, spoke. He’s a huge mountain of a guy. He
probably casts a shadow over Goliath. He’s very strong speaker. He spoke on why
the modern state of Israel is related to Bible prophecy. He did an excellent
job of showing from the Scripture why Jerusalem and why Israel is important. I
missed that section because I was just getting over a bad chest cold so I used
the time to rest a little and continue to work on my own presentation.
The second
speaker, for those who could understand his Yiddish, Russian, Polish, German,
Brooklyn, California, and Texan accent, was Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum. He spoke
on the prophetic promise of the land of Israel in the Abrahamic covenant. Tommy
Ice did an excellent job of organizing these presentations even though he said
he really didn’t think about coordinating them but they came together in quite
a significant order. Arnold started off with the promise of the Land in the
Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant promises a specific piece of real
estate to Abraham and his descendants. He went through all of those passages
quite exhaustively showing that the Abrahamic Covenant is really the foundation
for the land promise in the Old Testament, and that the one who owns the entire
earth, which is God, gives Israel's ownership of the land. He has the sovereign
right of disposal of property and he has given that land to the descendants to
of Abrahamic, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Mosaic Covenant there is a condition and
that is that if they are not spiritually obedient then they are going to be
kicked out of the land. So the only way to live in God’s land is to live in
God’s land in God’s way. Arnold did a great job of substantiating that, as
always.
Following lunch
Charlie Clough was the third speaker on Monday. He spoke about the prophetic
promise of the land in the Land Covenant in Deuteronomy 29 and 30. Now what
Charlie did was a little bit different from what a lot of people might expect.
There’s a debate within contemporary Old Testament scholarship about whether or
not there’s an actual separate land covenant or Palestine Covenant as it used
to be called by older dispensationalists. I usually refer to it as the land
covenant or the real estate covenant. Deuteronomy 29 starts off by saying
there’s another covenant other than the one given at Horeb. Horeb is another
name for Sinai so that implies there’s a different covenant aside from the
Sinai covenant that’s given in Deuteronomy 29. A lot of contemporary Old
Testament scholars want to argue that the other covenant that is being
discussed there in Deuteronomy 29 is sort of Moses revision of the Sinai
covenant in his Deuteronomy message. There are some minor differences between
what was given on Mount Sinai and what Moses in Deuteronomy states. They’re not
contradictory. They’re complimentary. Among contemporary scholarship they argue
that the Deuteronomic covenant is what is being mentioned there in chapter 29.
Charlie was taking the view that if we assume that they’re right we’re going to
show that the promise of the land is still embedded profoundly in Deuteronomy.
Some of you have listened to Charlie’s Deuteronomy series online and you know
that he did an excellent job of demonstrating that throughout the entire book
of Deuteronomy there is the assumption that Israel has been given the land that
God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in perpetuity. So he did a great job of
establishing that.
Then in what I
call the sleepers slot, because that is what most of us want to do at 3:15 in
the afternoon, sleep, Tommy stuck Randy Price. Anyone who knows Randy knows
that he is just detail-oriented, which doesn’t even come close to capturing
him. Randy’s first book on the Temple was about 750 pages. It’s called The
Coming Last Day Temple. Dr. John Walvoord with a little tongue-in-cheek said,
“No one in all of history has ever written so much about the temple and I doubt
if so much will ever be written again.” Since then, Randy has written two more
books on the Temple. So Randy leaves no molecule of sand unturned. He looks at
every detail so his presentation gets a little bogged down. He read it this
time. Usually he teaches it more than he reads it but he read it and that kind
of was hard for some people to track but he did an excellent job of dealing
with the prophetic promise of the land in the New Covenant. See, what this is
showing is that every one of those covenants with Israel has a promise of the
land. The New Covenant is going to be brought into effect in Israel when they
are back in the land and have a Davidic king on the Throne. You can’t separate
the New Covenant fulfillment from the presence of the Messiah, the Davidic King
on the Throne, and Israel being united and back in the land. They’re
inseparable. He did a great job of that as well.
In the evening
we had a banquet. Actually the rubber chicken wasn’t so rubbery and so the
dinner wasn’t too bad. It’s been worse. The carrot cake was great. That’s my
favorite cake as everyone knows and there were people at the table that didn’t
even touch theirs, so “waste not; want not”. After that we had a musician
that Tim LaHaye had known for a number of years. He’s actually won a Country
Music Association Award for his guitar playing. He’d been featured on a show
some of you may remember way back in the later 70s called, “That’s Incredible.”
People did these remarkable stunts and he was billed as the fastest guitar
player on earth. He played the William Tell Overture in about 22 seconds while
he was riding a motorcycle at 65 miles an hour. You could hear every single
note. This guy is just an old cowboy with his black hat and jeans and coat and
he played two Mozart overtures on the guitar at the same time. It was
incredible. It sounded like three guitars. I’ve never heard a guitar played
like that. He was quite remarkable. He even got everybody a little jazzed up.
He told us we were going to sing a song we sang in Sunday school. There were a
lot of us from Houston who had great fun with this because we got to sing, “Do
Lord.” We had great fun with that. That’s an inside joke that some of you know
why that’s so funny. Pastor Thieme used to always ridicule that song. Years ago
we had a pastor’s conference at Berachah Church in 1988 and I tried to get some
of the other pastors to put together a little men’s chorus group and go up and
sing something special for him, that is, to sing “Do Lord.” They were so scared
of him but people didn’t know what a great sense of humor he had. He would have
just fallen over laughing but they were too scared so we couldn’t pull that
off. We had fun anyway.
The speaker at
the banquet was the real treat. That was a man I first heard here in Houston at
the Jewish Community Center, Dr. Jacques Gauthier, who worked for twenty years
on his doctoral dissertation on who has the legal ownership rights to the Old
City of Jerusalem. Most people don’t realize that when they talk about East
Jerusalem and the Palestinian claims for East Jerusalem they’re talking about
the Old City of Jerusalem, which has all the holy sites for Israel and
Christians. Until the late 19th century that’s all there was. You
didn’t have Jews buying land and moving outside the walls until about the
1880’s when land was being purchased in small amounts. So the real heart of
Jerusalem is Old Jerusalem. The Palestinians are laying claim to that. Well,
Dr. Gauthier is laying claim to that. You’ve heard me present a lot of his
findings as I’ve discussed the San Remo Resolutions and the end of the First
World War and how the Balfour Declaration which had no legal standing
whatsoever was made completely a part of the San Remo Resolution and therefore
gained the status of international law because it was adopted word-for-word
into San Remo. He gave an hour-long presentation. When we get the videos up and
ready, you’re going to watch that video. It’s the best I’ve heard him do and
I’ve heard him three or four times. He does have some YouTube videos. He got
his doctorate at Geneva University at their School of International Law, and
the three professors he had to defend his dissertation to were hostile. They
were not at all sympathetic to his thesis, which is that the Jews have
undisputed legal ownership of all of Jerusalem and have since the end of World
War I. It took him over twenty years to write it. He has over 3200 footnotes
and the dissertation, which I have a copy of, weighs about 15 or 20 pounds.
Then on Tuesday
Dr. Touissant gave devotions. I hope we can get him here for the Chafer
Conference. Then Dr. David Reagan spoke on the topic of the evil of Replacement
Theology, its origin, history, and contemporary relevance. I only heard about
twenty minutes of it but from what I hear he did a great job on it. He showed
how replacement theology was not part of the early church in the first two
centuries and then how it gradually came in because of a shift to an
allegorical interpretation. Of course, you all have been taught about this many
times but for many people this is new information. Historically this covered
the Church from the early period up to the Protestant Reformation.
Then in the
second part we had a message from Dr. Bill Watson who is a professor of history
at Colorado Christian University and his topic was on the history of Christian
Zionism. Basically he covered the rise of Christian Zionism from the period just
after the Reformation through the 1700s so that means he covered the last part
of the 1500s up through the 1700s. He is amazing. He’s a multi-linguist, a
polyglot. He was a German translator for the United States Army back in the 60s
and 70s and that training has certainly served him well. He also knows Greek
and Latin and several other languages, which enables him to do a lot of
original language research through the 17th century, which is his
area of specialty. He’s very knowledgeable on 17 th and 18 th
century British literature and he has discovered dozens and dozens of passages
showing that many of the Puritans were not only pre-Millennial; they were
pre-tribulational.
For years
dispensationalists have been told by people who are not dispensationalists that
John Nelson Darby was the first to “invent” the pre-tribulational rapture in
the 1830s. Now because of the scholars that have been motivated by this think
tank quite a number of historical figures, going all the way back to
pseudo-Ephraim in the 4th century in Syria taught a
pre-tribulational rapture. Not all of these guys had put the details together
over the years. Some of them only had three and a half year tribulations but
they teach that the church is raptured before the tribulation begins and that’s
very clear. What he pointed out in this is that what was going along with this
during this period was a shift to a literal view of the Jews, not the Church,
and the literal land of Israel and that the Jews would be restored to the land
before the Messiah came back. He did a fabulous job with that. It gets a little
into historical minutiae and detail. He quotes dozens and dozens of these
pastors and theologians Under the Puritan Commonwealth under Cromwell there
were individuals like John Owen who was a chaplain to Cromwell and John Drury,
another chaplain, and many, many others developing these ideas at this time and
citing from the original sources to show that. Bill did a marvelous job and
that covers the first thirteen pages of my outline, which is good. I had a sixty-page
outline so all of this jelled. Reagan did the Reformation, Watson did the first
200 years after the reformation and I did Jewish/Christian Zionism from the
Protestant Reformation up to the Balfour Declaration. Of course the night
before Gauthier’s presentation covered everything from the Balfour declaration
up until the present so you can listen to these four messages I’ve described
and you will get a panorama of Church history and what the Church has thought
about Israel throughout the centuries from the birth of the Church to the
present.
The current
events on Tuesday night were developed by Bill Koenig who is a White House
Correspondent and he has his own website. It’s called Watch.org, very
conservative. I would recommend you looking at his website. He gave a lot of
interesting analyses of what’s going on today. Some is frightening information
when you realize what some people in this country in upper levels of leadership
are trying to do.
Then the other
speaker Tuesday night was someone known to this congregation, Norm Ettinger,
who the editor of the Ettinger Report. We had him here in September. He spoke
about some different things and one of the more interesting aspects was on the
demographic issue. One of the big claims you’ll hear from people who support
the two-state solution, is that Israel should have their own state and the
Palestinians should have their own state, is that the demographics support it.
The Arabs are making babies like rabbits. If it’s one state, the Arabs are
going to overwhelm the Jews, some claim. But the reality is that the Arabs
aren’t making babies like rabbits any more. Israel has poured a lot of money
into Palestine, which a lot of people don’t know, building the infrastructure
in Palestine to try to build the middle class. The more middle class they
become the more the birthrate drops so the Arab birthrate has dropped
significantly. Whereas in Israel, not just the ultraorthodox in Israel are
having babies but it’s become a mark of Zionist patriotism to have four or five
children. This is becoming popular in Israel so the birthrate in Israel for the
last ten years has been skyrocketing. At the current ate there’s not going to
be a problem, If you had a single state like you have now, the Jews would be in
the majority and would stay in the majority.
Then the next
morning the first speaker was Michael Rydelnik. I’ve gotten to know him well
the last couple of years. He’s the head of the Jewish Studies Department at
Moody Bible Institute. He spoke about the land promise in the New Testament. He
also began with his testimony, which was fascinating because both of his
parents were Holocaust survivors. All of their families were killed in the
Holocaust. He was raised in an Orthodox home and the story of how he came to
know the Lord is fascinating. I’m not going to tell you because when I go to
Kiev in January this was such a great presentation I’m going to have that shown
one night when I’m gone. Tommy Ice will be here both Sundays and the Tuesday
and Thursday in between we’ll have videos of Thessalonians a couple of those
nights and then this video of Michael Rydelnik one night and you will
thoroughly enjoy that.
Last, Andy
Woods, pastor of Sugar Land Bible Church, spoke on Israel and the Kingdom of
God at the 10:15 slot. Andy always does a great job. That’s a tough slot
because so many people have to get to the airport, get in their cars. And
whatever and leave early so it’s not always a full house.
So it was a
great conference. We’ll have the videos up. The papers are already up on the
website so you can look at them. That reminds me. I skipped Paul Wilkinson. He
spoke in the afternoon before me on the Palestinian case for the land for
Israel. In other words, we know Israel’s case for why they own the land but
what is the Palestinian’s case? And I’ll give you the short version. There
isn’t one. But they have a lot of lies and a lot of propaganda. The world
believes their lies and propaganda and they ignore the legalities and they turn
their back on Israel. It really doesn’t matter what the truth is because the
world just doesn’t care.
Okay, we’re
going to look at Romans. This report shortened things but we have a short
passage. I have several things I want to accomplish before we’re done so you
might want to turn in your Bibles briefly to Romans 11. We won’t be there long.
In the last several months we’ve gone through in significant and meticulous
detail Romans 9, 10, and 11. I received two nice compliments from friends that
I respect very much for their scholarship. One was Randy Price. He came up to
me after my presentation and said, “I don’t know how you keep all those dates
and people straight.” I said, “I had 60 pages of notes in front of me.” I
should have just told him thanks, that I keep it all straight
but no, I’m too honest. He said he couldn’t tell I was reading a thing. So that
was nice. But the one I really prize was Mark Hitchcock. He’s pastor of a large
church on the north side of Oklahoma. He had one of his deacons with him and
they got on the same elevator with me, and Mark said, “This is Robby Dean. I
was telling you about him on the way down here. Whatever he does, he leaves no
stone unturned when he develops a topic or subject.” I thought that Randy Price
is really the one that leaves no stone unturned but that was a nice compliment
and I appreciated that.
I’ve tried to leave no stone unturned in Romans 9, 10, and 11. The real
meat of this section deals with God’s righteousness in relationship to Israel.
It ends at Romans 11:32 which we finished last time. Verse 33 is a transition.
Paul has built his case for the righteousness of God in relation to Gentiles,
in relation to Jews, and their failure including that all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God. Then he goes to Romans 3, 4, and 5 to develop
justification. From there he goes to develop sanctification in chapters 6, 7,
and 8. Then in 9 through 11 he deals with the righteousness of God in relation
to Israel. As he builds to this climax, the apex of his argument, he just breaks
out in his praise in verse 33, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His
ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or,
who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? For of Him
and through Him and to Him are all things. To Whom Be the glory forever. Amen.”
That final statement to the glory of God isn’t just concluding Romans 9,
10, and 11. It is a conclusion to Romans 1–11. Everything builds and then
as Paul thinks about his intricate, detailed presentation he has made of the
righteousness of God, he just breaks out in this spontaneous praise of God’s
omniscience, His wisdom, and how He has worked this out in human history so He
will ultimately be beyond our comprehension.
In verse 12:1 Paul is going to shift gears to talk about the application
of what we have learned about God’s righteousness in different areas and
different arenas of life. So Romans 1–11 is the foundation and then
there’s a shift in Romans 12 through 16. What I thought we’d do is just go back
and pick up an overview. It’s important to us to go through these kinds of
overviews. So often we can get lost in the weeds and the details and the
minutiae as we go through the exegesis of a passage, and we forget that these
are letters written to be read from the pulpit to the congregation. We go
through and we take it apart and we look at all the nuances and everything,
which is important, but sometimes we lose the forest for the trees. Since I
haven’t done an overview in a while of Romans 1–11, I wanted to do that
this evening.
In chapter one we have the introduction, which covers the first
seventeen verses and introduces us to the theme of the book. We have the
initial greetings and salutations in Romans 1:1–7 where Paul addresses
this to the church in Rome and he brings out several facets about Jesus Christ,
born of the seed of David, identifying him early on where he’s foreshadowing
the emphasis on Israel. He states that Jesus doesn’t become the Son of God but
His resurrection demonstrates that He is
the Son of God. In verse 5 he talks about receiving grace and apostleship for
the purpose of obedience to the faith. Okay, that’s the greeting in one through
seven.
Then in verses Romans 1:8–15 Paul expresses his desire to be visit
Rome and that he’s tried many times but he’s been blocked. It hasn’t been God’s
will for him to make it but he wants to come. In Romans 1:15 he says, “So, for
my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” I keep
coming back to this because the term “gospel” we often use in a narrow sense,
meaning what a person needs to believe to have eternal life or be justified. If
Paul is writing this epistle to the congregation in Rome, why do they need to
hear how to get to heaven?
He’s made it very clear that he’s not just talking about the gospel in
terms of its simple message of how an unbeliever gets saved or justified and
gets eternal life. There’s a full gospel. I hate to use this term but the
Pentecostals do not understand it’s how to have the full, abundant life that
Jesus gives us. It’s not just getting justified. It includes how the justified
person is to live and experience all the blessings that God has given him.
That’s what Romans does. It talks about justification in verses 3–5 and
it talks about the spiritual life in 6–8. That’s very much a part of the
gospel. We tend to think of in the narrow John 3:16 aspect but Paul uses the
term “gospel” many, many times. It’s the full good news, all of the wonderful
things God has provided for us in life, not just getting eternal life but
getting all the blessings we’ve been blessed with in the spiritual life. So
that’s how Paul uses it here.
The theme is expressed in verses 16 and 17, “For I am not ashamed of the
gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to
the Jew first and also to the Greek” I’ve pointed out many times in Romans that
the word salvation is not just getting phase 1 justification. It has to do with
the entire spiritual life all the way out to glorification. So that’s how he
uses it here. “For in it {the} righteousness of God is revealed from faith to
faith; as it is written, “BUT THE
RIGHTEOUS {man} SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.” That first faith is justification.
The second faith is sanctification or spiritual life faith. This is grounded in
the righteousness of God. Now that’s the introduction through verse 17.
Then in the first major division it goes through Romans 5:21. God’s
righteousness is revealed in condemnation and justification. God is totally
righteous in condemning the human race because we haven’t lived up to His
standard. Chapters 1-3 focus on condemnation. If you think your way through
Romans, the first five chapters deal with God’s condemnation and justification.
That’s broken into two parts: condemnation in 1:18 to 3:20 and then
justification in 3:21–5:21. Then we’ll see sanctification and Israel and
you have the first eleven chapters.
In breaking this down in this first part of 1:18 through 3:20 Paul deals
with immoral Gentiles. God brings judgment in time, discipline in time against
them. That’s the wrath of God. It isn’t the future judgment it’s the present
tense being poured out today. Wrath of God is (present tense) being revealed
from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the
truth in unrighteousness for what may be known of God is manifested in them.
Every pagan unbeliever knows that God exists. And they hate it. And they suppress
it and they fight against it. That’s what this is all about. Because they’re
worshipping the creature instead of the creator God then delivers them over. He
just pulls back the restraints and says, “You want to do that? Good, I’m just
going to let you have your way.” He gives them their head and they go forward.
So we have these series of verbs in verse 24, “God also gave them up to
uncleanness.” You have a series of different sins that characterize that first
giving over.
Then verse 26, “For this reason God gave them over to vile passions.”
This is the introduction of homosexuality. This is a judgment. We’re not being
judged for homosexual marriage. Homosexual marriage is a judgment on this
nation for the fact that we have rejected God, for the fact that we have
rejected the Scripture. What we’re seeing in our country today is the judgment
of God for negative volition. We’re not going to be judged for these horrible
things that are going on. That is the judgment for our rejection of the truth.
The third stage in verse 28, “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge
God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which
are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil;
full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; {they are} gossips, slanderers,
haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to
parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and
although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things
are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval
to those who practice them.” That is the ultimate stage of cultural collapse
because when that characterizes a people, people can no longer stand.
So we go from the condemnation of immoral Gentiles to the condemnation
of moral Gentiles in chapter 2. God judges those who think they are better than
everybody else and good enough to get into heaven. So the self-righteous and
moral Gentiles are condemned in the first sixteen verses, the hypocrites in the
first verse. “Therefore you have no excuse, every one of you who passes
judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you
who judge practice the same things.” This is in terms of their pride and their
arrogance. So there’s a condemnation of the moral man.
Then the Jews are condemned. The Jews have the Law. The Gentiles sinned
without the Law. They didn’t have the revelation of God; nevertheless they have
sinned and God judges them based on obedience to the revelation He has given
them, which is natural revelation. They have rejected that and because of that,
God is going to bring judgment upon them. Then the topic shifts to the fact
that not only are the Gentiles guilty, but the Jews are guilty. Yes, they have
the Law. Yes, they revere and honor the Law superficially but they broke it.
There are six privileges they had, Romans 2:19, “and are confident that
you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a
corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the
embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you, therefore, who teach another, do
you not teach yourself? You who preach that one shall not steal; do you steal?
You who say that one should not commit adultery; do you commit adultery? You
who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the Law, through your
breaking the Law, do you dishonor God?”
The Jews only held to the Law in a formal way but they didn’t obey it.
Their failures are outlined in verses 22 and 23, “You who say that one should
not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob
temples? You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you
dishonor God?” So they come under condemnation.
Secondly, in verses 25-29, they revered circumcision but they didn’t
obey God. They thought a superficial obedience was good enough but it wasn’t so
they condemned by God. They rejected the oracles of God in chapter 3, verses
1-8. That brings the Jews under condemnation and then from 3:9-20 Paul shows
that the whole world is condemned because no one has lived up to the righteous
standard of God so that all are under sin, verse 9, “What then? Are we better
than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks
are all under sin; as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE
BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”
So those who are with the Law are condemned by the Law. Those who don’t
have the Law are still disobedient to the revelation that has been given to
them. And then we come to 3:21, which starts the great section on justification
by faith alone. “But now apart from the Law {the} righteousness of God has
been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even {the}
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe;
for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in
Christ Jesus.” In verses 21 to 31 we see the development of this doctrine
of justification by faith alone. In verse 24 we see it’s a free gift. It’s
not something we earn, “being justified as a gift by His grace through the
redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” Redemption is the purchase price that is
in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation.
These are great words that are lost today because we’ve dumbed down
translations and we have raised a generation of children and adults who don’t
have a vocabulary. It’s sad because these are great words: redemption,
justification, and imputation. This morning I had a great conversation with Jim
Myers. By the way, there’s a little turmoil over in Ukraine. I’ll be going over
there in January. Don’t worry, it’s worse on the news than it is in reality. He
says there’s been a few riots downtown, a few demonstrations and the people
demonstrating have done stupid things like throw rocks at the thugs who pass as
police officers and they get shot. If you don’t want to get shot by police,
don’t throw rocks at them. It’s pretty simple but these things have only
happened in a few small areas. One event that happened is there were a lot of
western journalists there. The police thugs beat up on the journalists because
the journalists were telling everyone what they were doing. It’s confined, and
Jim says 95% of Kiev business is going on as normal but there have been a few
incidents that we need to be in prayer for them.
Jim was talking about the fact he had an opportunity that I may have the
same opportunity when I go to teach at a church named St. Paul’s. It’s been
there for quite some time. He said, “Robby, I’m going through Romans and they
never heard of justification or imputation. And they call themselves St. Paul’s
church and they don’t know anything. No matter how dumbed-down I get it’s not
down enough. I teach what I think is pure pabulum and people come and say
that’s too heavy, too hard to understand.” It’s not any different here.
Internationally we have raised a generation of nitwits;
people who can’t think anymore. It’s not just an American problem; it’s an
international problem. I think this is one of the things that is going to set
the stage for the Antichrist: people who can’t think any more. Anyway, Romans
3:21 to 3:31 explains justification.
Then chapter 4 illustrates it from Abraham: that Abraham believed God
and it was accounted or imputed to Him for righteousness. Why? Because He
believed God. This was long before there was a Mosaic Law, before He was
circumcised, before there was any of that Abraham believed God and it was
accounted to him as righteousness. If you understand that is the illustration
in Romans 4, you can understand chapter 4. It all relates to that illustration
of Abraham.
Then in chapter 5 we have the benefits of justification. Because God has
declared us just before His Supreme Court these are the benefits we have. We
have peace with God in verse 1. In verse 2 we can rejoice in hope of the glory
of God. In verse 3 we have these blessings and we can glory in tribulation
because we know that tribulation produces endurance, and endurance character,
and character hope. Hope does not disappoint because of the love of God.
That’s the fourth point. We have a tangible expression of God’s love
poured out in us by God the Holy Spirit. A fifth benefit is that we will be
saved in the future from the wrath through Him. We will miss out on aspects of
divine discipline in time because we’re obedient to His Word. And the sixth
benefit is that while we were enemies in verse 10 we were reconciled to God,
therefore we can rejoice in God through the Lord Jesus Christ in verse 11. Then
we have justification applied to all in verses 12 through 21. Verse 21 says,
“So that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through
righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
So how do we experience that on a day-to-day basis? Well, that’s the
next section called sanctification or the spiritual life in Romans chapters 6,
7, and 8. The first part develops the fact that sanctification, or the ability
to live for God, is based on the baptism by the Holy Spirit at justification.
That’s 6:1–14. Then we learn that sanctification means that not only has
the power of the sin nature been broken, but also that we are no longer slaves
to sin but are to live as slaves to righteousness. Is that done by the Law? Paul
answers that in chapter 7 by saying, “No, it’s not done by the Law.” The Law is
righteous, just, and good; but you can’t get sanctified by
the Law, it’s just going to leave you frustrated.
The answer comes in chapter 8, which is that sanctification is based on
a relationship with God, the Holy Spirit. We have to walk by the Spirit if
we’re going to experience the fullness of life God has for us and that brings
Paul to a conclusion in verses 31–39 where he emphasizes God’s
everlasting, eternal love, and that nothing can separate us from God’s love. As
he comes to that conclusion in verses 38 and 39 which says, “For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But someone may say who’s Jewish, “Wait a minute. God seems to have
dumped the Jews. He’s promised these things in the Old Testament and now He’s
going to the Gentiles. God doesn’t like the Jews anymore. So how can we believe
in His faithfulness?” So in Romans 9–11 we see God’s righteousness
revealed in His relationship with Israel. Romans 9 shows that His righteousness
is revealed in His rejection of corporate Israel. Not every Jew is unsaved but
corporately Israel is now removed from a place of blessing because they have
rejected Jesus as Messiah. This isn’t permanent. This is only temporary. He
says this reveals God’s righteousness because Israel disobeyed God so God is
going to punish them. It’s not a permanent state and it’s not against
individuals but it’s dealing with corporate Israel. Israel is still the chosen,
the choice one, of God.
Election is corporate here. It has to do with the corporate selection of
Israel. Then in Romans 10 we saw that God’s righteousness is based on Israel’s
corporate neglect of Israel. Because Israel has rejected what God revealed God
is just and righteous in punishing them. But it’s not permanent. There will be
a time when any who call on him, and when Israel calls on Him in the name of
the Lord, they will be delivered. That is a quote from Joel 2 and that refers
to an end time fulfillment.
Then we come to Romans 11 where God’s righteousness reveals His
faithfulness to the promises to Israel and there will be a future deliverance
of Israel and they will be restored to that place of blessing. That’s seen in
that olive tree illustration. I had a great example of this sitting at the
banquet table the other night talking with a lady at the table who was a Bible
teacher at a church up north and she made a comment and it related to the olive
tree illustration and she just had the interpretation dead wrong which isn’t
unusual today. People think the olive tree illustration has something to do
with salvation or something to do with this thing or that thing. It has to do
with the place of blessing within the Abrahamic covenant, that Israel is
removed temporarily. Breaking off the branches can’t be salvation because that
would indicate a loss of salvation. It’s that they’re being temporarily removed
from the place of blessing. That’s the whole theme in these three chapters. The
wild olive branches are grafted in and this is all going to work itself
together in the plan of God so that eventually He will bring the natural olive
branches back in and he says that God’s plan will work out even more to the
benefit to all of the nations.
In verse 28 he says, “From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies
for your sake, but from the standpoint of {God’s} choice they are beloved for
the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy
because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that
because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has
shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.”
This is how it all comes together when the final part comes together in
God’s plan we’re just going to be speechless how it all came together and that
what brings Paul to this great statement where he says, “Oh, the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His
judgments and unfathomable His ways!” When he says this he begins with a figure
of speech, “the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.”
Now often we use the figure of speech of something being
incomprehensible. We say it’s “unfathomable.” A fathom is a unit of
measurement. Long time ago they used to measure of a hand width or the length
of the arm from the shoulder to the tip of the thumb for a cubit or the length
of a forearm for a cubit. A fathom was if you stood up and held your arms out
in a circle, the circumference of that circle was roughly a fathom. It came to
be six feet. This was a nautical term. This would be used when you were going
out into the water and you want to measure the depth of the water you’d see how
many fathoms deep it was. If you can’t see the bottom it’s unfathomable. You
can’t find the depths. You can’t reach the bottom of something.
So that’s the idea here. You can’t plumb the depths. We can’t comprehend
God. So this is a great figure of speech used many times throughout the Scripture.
It’s usually related to wealth, the depth of the riches. Riches is a metaphor
used to describe the abundance of what God has given us. Passages like Romans
2:4, “Do you despise the riches, that is the abundance, of God’s goodness, that
is forbearance and longsuffering not knowing that the goodness of God brings
you to repentance.”
Riches of God there refers to the abundance of His grace gifts. Romans
9:23 says, “Oh, that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels
of mercy.” Ephesians uses it a lot. Ephesians 1:7 talks about the riches of His
grace, the abundance of His grace. Ephesians 1:18 talks about “the riches of
the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” Ephesians 2:7 talks about the
“exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ.” Then
Colossians 1:27 says, “To them God willed to make known what are the riches of
the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.”
It’s the superabundance of what God has given us freely in grace. Wisdom
and knowledge, how unsearchable are His judgments. This is the Greek word anexereuanetos meaning that you can’t search it
out, you can’t seek it all, and it’s incomprehensible. So the wisdom and
knowledge are incomprehensible to us. It doesn’t mean we can’t comprehend what
God has revealed to us but there’s more to God than that. God hasn’t revealed
Himself exhaustively to us so we’ll go through eternity and never come close to
plumbing the depths of what we can learn from God. They are past finding out,
past tracing out; they’re unsearchable and inscrutable.
So let’s look at the terms wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge is more than
information. Information is just facts and data. Knowledge takes that and
constructs it together in various ways to produce something. So contextually
knowledge has to do with God’s understanding of every aspect of creation. It’s
part of His omniscience. God’s knowledge is all-inclusive. There’s nothing we
can imagine that is beyond the knowledge of God. God is infinite. All of His
attributes are infinite. Infinity applies to all of His attributes including
knowledge. His knowledge has no limits. He knows everything that is actual, and
everything that is possible. He knows every conceivable permutation. His
knowledge is direct and exhaustive. He knows all the knowable. His knowledge
includes everything from the minutest detail to all the macro relations, causes
and consequences of anything and everything in the universe. And He knows it
directly, intuitively, and immediately. He is always aware of everything. His
knowledge never increases or decreases.
Now wisdom is more than knowledge. Wisdom is the ability to take
knowledge and to use it to craft something that is skillful and beautiful. It
has to do with not only knowledge but also artistry. So wisdom is the
application of knowledge in a skillful or artistic way in the production of the
creation of something. Proverbs 3:19, “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth,” Wisdom is the skill
that God used in creating the universe. Psalm 104:24, “O Lord how manifold are
Your works. In wisdom You have made them all.” Psalm 136:5, “To Him Who by
wisdom made the heavens. His mercy endures forever.” So knowledge and wisdom
are brought together in Romans 11:33 because it pulls together everything that
God used in developing and carrying out His plan and it’s beyond us. We cannot
unscrew the inscrutable. We can just sit back and marvel at how it will all
come together.
Then Paul supports this with two quotes from the Old Testament. In
Romans 11:34, he quotes from Isaiah 40:13 and 14, “For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS
COUNSELOR?” In Isaiah
40:13 we read, “For who has directed the spirit of the Lord or has His
counselor taught Him?” The answer is no one. No one can teach God. He already
knows everything. No one can give him guidance. He is already aware of
everything. Then Isaiah 40:14, “From whom did He take counsel and who
instructed Him? Who taught Him the path of justice or who taught him knowledge
or showed Him the way of understanding?” No one did because God knows it all.
This is a remarkable passage on the omniscience of God.
Then Romans 11:35 says, “Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN?” This is just a really free
translation from Job 41:11. It’s sort of a paraphrase of the verse. In other
words God is saying there was nothing that preceded Me. Everything is Mine so
you can’t appeal to anything above me or before me as the basis for my
knowledge.” This brings us to the concluding prayer which says from the source
of God comes everything. Romans 11:36 says, “For from Him and through Him and
to Him are all things. To Him {be} the glory forever. Amen.” He is the source
of everything and He is the means by which everything has been created and it
is ultimately for Him. That brings us to the end of the first eleven chapters
in Romans and next time we’ll come back and start in Romans 12:1 where we get
into the application of God’s righteousness to everyday living.