Israel's Failure, Part 2
Romans 10:3
How thankful we are for a wonderful day to share together and rejoice in the things of the Lord, as His people to come together to study His Word. And tonight we're going to go back to Romans chapter 10 in our continuing study in Romans. And I'm just so very excited about the things that the Lord has impressed upon my heart to share with you tonight, and I'm not going to be in a hurry. If I don't finish tonight, I'll be back next week, and I trust you will as well. So we won't go by the things that are of great importance to us.
But last week we started to look at this great tenth chapter. And a phrase that we came to at the beginning of verse 3 has really stuck in my mind. It says that "they," and referring to Israel, "Being ignorant of God's righteousness." That is such a haunting thought that the Jewish people who had received God's revelation, God's self‑disclosure on the pages of the Old Testament were ignorant of His righteousness is almost inconceivable. But that's exactly what the Apostle Paul said. They were ignorant of God's righteousness. And as we introduced that thought the last time two weeks ago, I've been unable to divorce myself from pursuing that thought even further and I want to share a little bit more tonight along the line of being ignorant of God's righteousness. That's such a very very important theme.
And I want to begin, if I might, by having you turn in your Bible to Jeremiah chapter 9. Jeremiah chapter 9, and I want to share with you the first few verses of the chapter and then some toward the end. And as chapter 9 begins, we see Jeremiah in his classical weeping state. And he says in verse 1, "O that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." In other words, he doesn't have sufficient supply of tears to give expression to his sorrow. And in verse 2 he says, "O that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them for they're all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men and they bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth for they proceed from evil to evil and they know not Me, saith the Lord."
And the weeping of Jeremiah was because his people didn't know God. They were ignorant of God. Go down to verse 23, same chapter. "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth, or boasteth, boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord."
If a man is to boast, let him boast in that which is most boastful, if you can say that, most worthy. And that is that he knows Me, that I am a God who is righteous. They know not Me, said Jeremiah, they know not Me. Hard to imagine with all of the revelation that they had had that they still didn't know God, they were ignorant of God's righteousness.
Now the words of Jeremiah chapter 9 are much like those of Romans 9 and Romans 10. They're the same kinds of words. Do you remember in Romans chapter 9 how the Apostle Paul said, "I say the truth, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart," and he could wish himself accursed from Christ for the sake of his brethren, his kinsmen who are Israelites? In other words, he had the same feelings that Jeremiah had. He had the same sorrow of heart because he looked at a people who didn't know God. And he says the same thing in chapter 10 verse 1 and 2, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge."
So Paul really stands in line with Jeremiah as a weeping prophet, as a weeping messenger. And he is not unlike the Lord Himself who wept over the city of Jerusalem and said, "You didn't know the day of your visitation." When God came you didn't know Him...you didn't recognize that I was He. And the source of Jeremiah's anguish and the source of Paul's anguish and the source of the anguish of our Lord was ignorance...ignorance. When they knew God, Romans 1 says, they glorified Him not as God. They refused to know the God who had been revealed to them.
I believe Isaiah faced the same thing. Listen to what he says in Isaiah 1 verses 2 through 4: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows his owner and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, My people do not think. Ah, sinful nation, a people ladened with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters, they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the holy one of Israel unto anger, they are gone a way backward." And I would draw your attention to what he says, "they do not know, My people doth not think."
In chapter 5 of Isaiah verse 13, he says, "Therefore My people are gone into captivity," and he's referring to the Babylonian captivity. "They are gone into captivity because they have no knowledge...they have no knowledge." That's the essence of it.
Hosea faced the same thing. He said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." God speaks about this willful ignorance on Israel's part in the plaintive words of Psalm 95 and verse 10, this is what it says, "Forty years was I grieved with this generation and said, It is a people that do err in their heart and they have not known My ways." They know know Me. And the echo of Israel's ignorance bounces down through the corridors of history to the time of Christ, to the time of Paul, they still didn't know Him, they still didn't know Him. Tragedy of all tragedies.
Jesus on the cross in Luke's gospel, chapter 23 verse 34, prays a prayer and He says, "Father, forgive them for they...what?...they know not what they do." They don't know what they do and they don't know who they're doing it to. They are ignorant. They are willfully ignorant. They do not know. They do not think.
Peter preaching in the book of Acts chapter 3 verse 14 says to them, "You denied the holy one and the just and you desired a murderer to be granted unto you," in other words, you changed your Messiah for Barabbas. "You killed the prince of life whom God has raised from the dead of which you are witnesses, and his name through faith and his name has made this man strong, that is the man they had just healed, whom you see and know, yea the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all," then he says in verse 17 of Acts 3, "And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance you did it, as did also your rulers." Ignorant..ignorant...didn't know. The Apostle Paul recounts his testimony of the time before he was saved, he says, "I was a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." And you must understand that there has been through the history of Israel a pervasive ignorance. And you see it today, all you have to do is walk the streets of Palestine. They do not now know God any more than they knew Him then in the time of the Savior and the Apostles and the time of Isaiah and Jeremiah, in the time of Hosea and the time the psalmist wrote of their ignorant unbelief.
This, I believe, to be the supreme national tragedy in the history of the world because it is a squandering of such immeasurable privilege and opportunity to have been the recipients of the Word of God. And we are reminded of that in chapter 9, aren't we, of Romans in verse 4, "The Israelites to whom pertains the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service, that is the ritual or the worship or the ceremonies, and the promises whose are the fathers and of whom is concerning the flesh Christ came." In other words, they had all of that, they had all the self‑disclosure of God, they were the ones who received the oracles of God, it says in Romans chapter 3. And they didn't know God. And consequently, in spite of all of the privilege, in spite of all of the opportunity, the Jew finds himself on the same level as the Gentile of whom it is said in Ephesians 4:18, "He is alienated from God, his mind is darkened, he doesn't know God." And the Jew is in the same boat.
Now this tragic fact of Israel's ignorance is the theme of chapter 10...it's the theme of the chapter. Proudly they claimed to know God, truthfully they didn't know Him at all. They were utterly ignorant as demonstrated by the fact that they hurried to kill God in human flesh.
Now remember what we've been learning. In the book of Romans Paul is endeavoring to present the gospel of justification by grace through faith. In other words, he's presenting how to be right with God, how to have a relationship with God, an eternal relationship, a sin‑cleansing relationship, a grace dispensing relationship, a peace‑giving relationship, a hope‑ giving relationship. And he's presented that...a man becomes right with God through faith, God's grace reaches out and the man responds by faith. The Jews, however, have rejected this. They have rejected Christ. They have rejected the gospel. They have, for the most part, rejected the preaching of the Apostles. And Paul knows that if he is to make any points with his teaching, he's going to have to deal with this unbelief of Israel. He's got to explain it somehow because unknowing and unwitting people are going to say, "Well how can we believe this is true if the Jews who are God's people don't believe it's true?" So he must discuss the unbelief of Israel as a defense of the validity of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. He's got to explain the unbelief of Israel. And so this is not some incidental text, this is the heart of his argument, this is the apologectic. If the gospel is really true then you better tell us why the people of God have rejected it...the ones who have always received God's law, the ones who have written down God's law, who have preserved God's law, who are the people of the covenant and the people of promise...if they reject it then you better tell us how that can happen if it's really God's message. And that's exactly what he does.
And in chapter 9 he points out the fact that Israel's unbelief fit into the sovereign plan of God, that they were unbelieving because that was the sovereign plan of God. That that didn't surprise God but rather God had planned for that, it was in the plan. And he points out all through chapter 9 that God is absolutely sovereign and that God never intended that all of Israel would be redeemed, He was selective. And the illustrations used are the illustration of Jacob being chosen over Esau and Pharaoh's heart being hardened to show that God is in fact sovereign. So Israel's rejection doesn't violate God's plan. Israel's rejection doesn't overturn God's plan. Israel's rejection doesn't obviate the truth of the gospel. In fact, God had that planned into it all along.
But that's only the first half. The first reason to explain Israel's unbelief is God's sovereignty. The second one is Israel's willful ignorance. And the two always go together...they always go together, they're always in perfect harmony, concurrence and balance that where you have God rejecting a person, being it an Esau or a Pharaoh or whoever else they might represent you will also have in that person willful ignorance and unbelief. One does not exist without the other. God doesn't just damn people apart from their own choices, they act in concurrence. And so as you come to the end of chapter 9 he begins to turn to the other side and present the balance. And he says in verse 32, the problem with Israel was they sought salvation not by faith but by works. So it wasn't just the sovereignty of God that explains their unbelief, it was also their own unbelief, their own willful choice in seeking something by works rather than by faith.
You say, "Well what about Esau?" That was true in his case. God rejected Esau but if you study the story of Esau you will find out that Esau was a secular man. Esau was a man who looked down on holy sacred privilege. Esau was a man who willfully ignored spiritual opportunity. He treated the blessings of God with disdain and thus he was rejected.
You say, "What about Pharaoh?" Listen carefully. If you study the plagues in Egypt you will find the first five times through the first five plagues Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart and not until the sixth plague do you find that it says, "And God hardened Pharaoh's heart." Yes there was a sovereign act of God, but not independent of the choice of Pharaoh.
So God's sovereignty always acts concurrently with man's willful choice. The two must go hand in hand. And so Paul shows, first of all, that Israel's unbelief fits the sovereign plan of God, doesn't change it, isn't a surprise to God, isn't a shock, doesn't overturn the plan, fits into it. But God is not independently responsible for what happened to Israel, they made a choice themselves. And that's where we move into chapter 10. And if the theme of chapter 9 is the sovereignty of God, the theme of chapter 10 is the volition or choice of man. And chapter 10 goes on to unfold the factors of Israel's unbelief, that Israel is set apart because of ignorance, that's the basic theme here...because of ignorance. And remember last time I told you five things that we need to note. They were ignorant of the person of God, they were ignorant of the provision of Christ, they were ignorant of the place of faith, they were ignorant of the perimeters of salvation and they were ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. And that takes us right through the tenth chapter.
So it isn't just the sovereignty of God independent of the choice of Israel, they were ignorant. And they were ignorant of all these things. And I want to hurry to say they were willfully ignorant. They chose to be ignorant. They weren't ignorant because they didn't have the information, they were ignorant because they chose to ignore the information, they chose to turn their back on it. When they knew God, they refused to worship Him as God. When they knew God's truth, they refused to acknowledge it as God's truth and they went about to establish, it says in verse 3, their own righteousness.
So the first thing that they were ignorant of was the person of God. They were ignorant of the person of God. And that's where we are in the first three verses. They were ignorant of the person of God. And again I say it's absolutely inconceivable but it's true, they were ignorant of the person of God, they who had received all of God's revelation chose to reject the message.
Remember we noted for you in chapter 2 verses 17 to 20 where it said that they rested in the law and they made a boast of God and they made a boast that they knew God's will and they made a boast that they approved the things that were excellent. And they boasted that they were really instructed in the law. And they boasted that they were guides of the blind and lights to those in darkness and instructors of the foolish and teachers of babes and so forth and so...and then he says, but you only have a form of knowledge and you have a form of truth. That is, it's outward. The truth is you don't know anything. And because of you God and His word and His name is being blasphemed. So they didn't know. And the first thing of which they were ignorant is the righteousness of God.
Now when you stop to think about this, people, this is the most basic characteristic of God's nature. And I want to talk about that and I want you to listen carefully because I think it's so very important that we understand these things. They were ignorant of that which was most basic about God. Now let me tell you what righteousness means, are you ready for this? Very profound definition, hang on, it means God's right. That's right, always right, always does what's right, thinks what's right, says what's right. God is right. If you want another word for righteousness it's...just take out the middle, rightness, the rightness of God. He's never wrong. He's never erring, never sinning, always right, the rightness of God. They were ignorant of His moral perfection. Another way to say it is His holiness. His holiness and His righteousness are inextricably linked. And I guess we could say that His rightness or His righteousness is His manifest holiness...holiness is that which is true of His essence, it manifests itself in His rightness.
You say, "Well they missed then the basic." That's right, they missed the basic. They missed the fact that God was absolutely holy. They thought God was less holy than He was and they were more holy than they were. They didn't understand how absolutely morally perfect God was. They didn't know how utterly free from wrong, how utterly unable to touch sin. I'm just enthralled with that thought because I fear that so many people today don't understand that either and they are equally ignorant of God's righteousness. Most people think God is just...just a nice guy, just somebody up there who wants everybody to feel good. I mean, we sort of make God into that. And that's the God of the liberals, isn't it? Just loves everybody. They don't know how really right He is, they misjudge His moral perfection. They misjudge His utter and absolute holy purity. They imagine that God is more tolerant of evil than He is. And that we're better than we are. So we pull God down a little, shove us up a little and we're pretty close....and a few religious activities and we're right on the line. That's a fatal error. We imagine God to be like us. God is absolutely right, absolutely right.
The whole Old Testament theme is holiness. The whole purpose of revealing in the Old Testament is to reveal the holiness, the rightness of God, the utter moral perfection and purity of God who knows no flaw in His nature. In fact, the Hebrew word "holy" is used over 600 times in the Old Testament to indicate moral perfection, to indicate moral perfection. And the sum of it comes in 1 Samuel 2:2 in that wonderful benediction of Hannah, she says there is no one holy like the Lord, there is no one beside You, there is no rock like our God, by Him deeds are weighed. In other words, everything is measured by His infinitely holy standard. There is no one holy like the Lord.
As I said earlier, His holiness has two elements. One is His utter separateness, His utter otherness, that is that He's other than we are. The second is His manifest righteousness. He is holy in that He is totally separated from us. He is holy in that He is manifestly right and morally perfect. That's why Exodus 15:11 says, "Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness?"
The truth here is so basic. If a person doesn't understand God's rightness, that is the supreme ignorance. If we imagine that God is less than He is, we have made a fatal mistake because we find God less than perfect, therefore He tolerates sin and imperfection, therefore we're going to be okay if we just improve a few things...fatal mistake...fatal mistake.
And all through the Old Testament God continues to affirm...continues to affirm how righteous He is. In fact, when you get into...just for a minute turn to Leviticus 18 and 19, and we're...as I said, we're not going to hurry, we'll just cover what we can cover. But in Leviticus 18 the Lord starts laying down some standards. He starts laying down some...actually you could call Leviticus 18 to 20 the law of holiness, this is God dispensing standards and laws and rules for social morality. This is one of the great law giving sections of the Old Testament. You know, there are basically four sections of the Old Testament that give God's moral perfection, that establish laws that come from His absolute holiness. The first one is in Exodus 20 and that's the Ten Commandments. And those are the basic moral standards. The second one comes also at the end of Exodus 20 and goes all the way to Exodus 23, to the end of the chapter, and that's been called the book of the covenant. And that basically is applied law...the applied standards, and it's a series of special case studies where God applies His standard to given situations.
And then in Deuteronomy chapters 12 to 25 there is what has been called the law of Deuteronomy, and that's the expansion and the explanation of the Ten Commandments in detail. So the...God reveals His moral perfection in the Ten Commandments, that's the basic standards. And then in the book of the covenant, that's the application of law to life, and then in Deuteronomy 12 to 25 in the law that expands and explains and builds on the Ten Commandments, and then this is the fourth of those major law sections from Leviticus 18 to 20 called the law of holiness where God lays down the principles for society and for morality within society. And all of these are His perfect expressions of His absolute purity. And He always sets Himself as the standard and this is what's so remarkable in Leviticus. I want you to see if you can follow this.
The end of verse 2...He's giving rules all the way through, you see them there. Look down, for example, in verse 12 and following, "Thou shalt not...thou shalt not...thou shalt not...thou shalt not...thou shalt not," all of this is that. It's a whole lot of laws coming from His perfect person. But notice the motivator, at the end of verse 2, "I am the Lord your God," the end of verse 4, "I am the Lord your God," end of verse 5, "I am the Lord," end of verse 6, "I am the Lord." In other words, this is the reason why obedience is necessary. The end of verse 21, "I am the Lord," the end of verse 30, "I am the Lord your God." Now look at 19 verse 3, "I am the Lord your God," verse 4, "I am the Lord your God," verse 10, "I am the Lord your God," verse 16, "I am the Lord," verse 18, "I am the Lord," verse 25, "I am the Lord your God." And it goes on like that, verse 31, "I am the Lord your God," verse 32, "I am the Lord your God." At the end...in the middle of verse 36, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt," the end of verse 37, "I am the Lord."
He keeps saying "I'm the Lord...I'm the Lord...I'm the Lord and I want you to obey these things because I demand perfection." And it's summed up in 19:2, look at the second verse of 19, here's the key to the whole thing, "Speak unto the congregation of the children of Israel and say unto them, You shall be holy for I the Lord your God...what?...am holy." "Now the reason I call for moral purity and perfection from you is because that's who I am...you be holy because I'm holy." That, beloved, is the most revealing statement in the Old Testament as to the nature of God and His demand on men. And that's why the Lord picked it up in Matthew 5:48 and said, "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect." And that's why Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 1:16, "Be ye holy, for I am holy."
In other words, a holy God demands a holy standard. The Old Testament then is geared to presenting to us a God who is absolutely holy, absolutely without flaw, absolutely perfect and righteous. And all the rest of His attributes, now get this, all the rest of His attributes are simply functioning in concert with His perfection. In other words, He loves and His love is perfect love. He is wise and His wisdom is perfect wisdom. He is powerful and His power is perfect power and His knowledge is perfect knowledge and His justice is perfect justice and His anger is perfect anger and His vengeance is perfect vengeance and His grace is perfect grace and His mercy is perfect mercy. See, it all flows in concert with His moral perfection.
All you have to do is look at the Old Testament to know the rightness of God, the righteousness of God. And that's why you just grab your head when you read, "They being ignorant of God's righteousness." It would have to be willful. It would have to be. He revealed His perfection in the Old Testament. He set the standard of perfection and He called men to that perfection. That's the heart of the holiness of God. That's the heart of the rightness of God. And I'll tell you something, nobody anytime is ever going to occupy a permanent place in His eternal presence who isn't holy because Habakkuk reminds us, "He's too pure to look on evil."
Now let me just expand on this for a moment. I want to just sort of give you some categories in which we see the perfection, the rightness, the holiness of God. We can't look at all the laws, all the ingredient laws that God has put into His moral system which reveals His absolute holiness, but just a few of them. We saw one this morning. Let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 6, and we're going to spend our time in the Old Testament tonight. Deuteronomy 6, it will sort of piggy‑back on our message this morning, and here we find that God reveals His perfection in the matter of worship, in the matter of worship. "Hear, O Israel," Deuteronomy 6:4, "The Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, with all thy might." And Jesus said, remember Matthew 22:40...verse 37