The Gifts & Calling of God Without Repentance — Romans 11:29 Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, let's just get right back as we usually do to the text where we left off, and that'd be in Romans chapter 11. We studied verse 26 and 27 in our last program, so we'll probably go on to verse 28 now. But we want to remind our television audience that we're just an informal Bible study. We don't claim to be formal. That's why you see the coffee cups on the tables. After every half-hour production, we stop and have a coffee break. And as I think I mentioned a few programs ago, we've got various denominations represented here. We do not trumpet any one over another. We just like to get into the book, and we trust help people to better understand it, and to be able to read it, and to enjoy it. Again, we like to remind our television folk that we do have all the past programs clear back to Genesis 1-1 available on the video. We put 12 programs on one 6-hour video, and we can send that out postage paid for $30. And then the books are word-for-word. They're just word-for-word transcribed from the tape. I sometimes wish Jerry would clean up some of my superfluous words, but he won't do that. So it's just exactly the way it is on the tape, and we can send them out postage paid for $6. And if you think that's a little exorbitant, you blame the printer, because they cost us $5.30 coming away, and you know we don't send them out for $0.70 a postage. But whatever, the Lord's blessing them, and then whenever, of course, fellows in prison write for them, we send them free. And missionaries have taken them. We send them free with them, and so whatever. We certainly don't hope to make anything on the tapes and the books, but we do have to cover our expenses, because we have no one underwriting us. We just wait for the Lord to supply. Now then let's go back into Romans chapter 11, and hopefully we'll finish the chapter this half hour. But let's go back to verse 26 to pick up the flow now, where Paul writes, and so all Israel shall be saved. And remember we looked at that in our last program, that I think the escaping remnant from Jerusalem and Judah of Matthew 24, verse 15 on down, will be that remnant. And then there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and we went back and looked at the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31. And this is my covenant, that's the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31-31, when I shall take away their sins. Now verse 28, to move on, as concerning the Gospel. Now of course you always have to ask, what Gospel? And remember I made reference to a little booklet by one of the Bible teachers on the old radio Bible class, and the title of it was, Which Gospel When? And lo and behold the other day I ran into a gentleman who had a whole bunch of them. So maybe some of you out there in television that you've written before, asking for them, you write to us and maybe we can use some of his copies. But anyway, he made it so plain, I was going back to Paul Van Gorder, some of you remember the name. And Paul Van Gorder made it so plain, that the Gospel proclaimed during Christ's earthly ministry and by the Twelve, was the Gospel of the Kingdom. And the Gospel of the Grace of God came from the Apostle Paul. Now there is as much difference between those two Gospels as night and day. The same God of course, God never changes, but He can change His message, and that's what we talked about in our earlier program, the Mysteries. And so out of that revelation of the Mysteries comes what Paul calls the Gospel of the Grace of God. In another place he calls it that Gospel which I preach among the heathen. In another place he calls it the Gospel of God, the Gospel of Christ, and we covered all that when we were back in Romans chapter 1. But the Gospel then that he's referring to in verse 28 is Paul's Gospel. That Christ died, shed His blood, was buried, and rose again from the dead. That's the Gospel. You can't add anything to it. You can't take anything from it. And so this Gospel then is what the Jew has been opposing ever since it began. And so Paul says concerning the Gospel, they, the Jews, are enemies for your sakes. But let's not lose sight. Let's not try to destroy them because they're our enemies, for what's the reason? As touching the election, in other words God extending salvation to them as touching election, they are beloved for the Father's sake. Now who were the fathers? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now you want to remember that God had, I guess you might say, a special relationship with Abraham, didn't He? He loved Abraham as well as David, a man after his own heart. And so God, I think, has to constantly go back to those patriarchs and His love for them when He deals with their offspring. And I think this is what Paul is saying, that the election, that remnant of Israel, that God is still preparing for the end -time events, are beloved because of their forefathers. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and so on and so forth. All right, now then verse 29. Now let's be careful. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Now that word repentance, I think, is crushed and crucified about as much as any word in the English language. What is the true definition of repentance as we see it here in Paul's writing? Well it is not falling down on your face and weeping in sorrow for your sin. The repentance spoken of here is a change of mind, a change of thinking. Now then, when it comes to God's dealing with Israel, has He changed His mind? No. Now look at the verse in that light. Treating repentance as changing His mind, so that the gifts and calling of God are without changing His mind. Now isn't that plain? Now what do we mean? Well let's go back to the Old Testament. Let's go back to Genesis 12. This is what it's all referring back to, remember. Let's go back and see what it says, even though I'm sure most of you know it from memory. Genesis 12, those first three verses, Genesis 12, verses 1, 2, and 3, the Abrahamic covenant. Now the Lord had said, that is back in chapter 11, Get thee out of thy country, from thy kindred, from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. Now look at verse 2. God is speaking to the man Abraham, and He says, I will make of thee a great nation, I will bless thee, I will make thy name great, thou shalt be a blessing. I will bless them that bless thee, I will curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. You think God changed His mind? No, He hasn't changed His mind. That's still valid, that is still true, and that Abrahamic covenant is still going to be fulfilled. Now you want to remember, this was the whole idea of Christ's first coming, was to fulfill these promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Israel rejected it out of hand, to the place that they crucified their Messiah. Did God turn His back on them forever? No. Like we've seen for the last several programs, He set them aside. He's blinded them, but He hasn't taken them out of His program. Oh, He's still going to come back and finish the Abrahamic covenant. Absolutely He is. Let's go over to chapter 15. Now Abraham, of course, shows his humanity. Now that's what I always like to point out when I teach about these Old Testament characters. They were just as human as we are. They weren't some super people. They weren't some kind of, what shall I say, far out nuts. No, they were just as common and everyday as we are. Now God's been promising Abraham a land and a nation of people, but who's in the land? Well the Canaanites. He's a stranger. He probably has to ask permission wherever he went with his flocks. In fact, our guide when we were in Israel back in 1975-76, I think, when Israel was still just coming out of their statehood, every place that an Arab or anyone would take their flocks they would have to ask the orchard owner whether they could graze their sheep or their goats for any number of days. And I imagine it was much the same way with Abraham. He didn't own a stick of ground, and he was a stranger in a land that had been promised to him, but he still didn't have the deed to it. All right, now just watch how human he is. Verse 8 of chapter 15, where God has been making all these promises, and then Abraham said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I'll inherit it? See that? God's Word wasn't even enough for a man like Abraham. He says, I want some proof. And what does God do? Gives it to him. Gives him the deed to the land in the succeeding verses, all the way down from verse 10 down to verse 18. God deeds not just that little and narrow lechon land from the Mediterranean to Jordan, but look how much God deeded to Abraham in verse 18, in the same day that He deeded the land by virtue of the old customs, I think, coming out of the laws of Hammurabi. In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying unto him, Unto thy seed have I given, past tense, see, I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates. The Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, and all these other tribes that were dwelling in that area of the world. That was a promise, and God gave it to Abraham, deeded it to him. You think He's going to change His mind now all of a sudden and say, well, no, I'm not going to let you have it? No way. So regardless of what Israel does with the land, whether they give it back or whether they fight for it or whatever, you rest assured when Christ returns, they're going to have the whole Middle East as their homeland, all the way from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates, all the way from Mount Hermon, all the way down to the Red Sea. That's going to be Israel's homeland. Now they haven't got it yet, they're not even close, but they're going to. Why? Because the works and calling of God are without His changing His mind. All right, let's look at another promise. Come on over to 2 Samuel chapter 7. 2 Samuel chapter 7, the portion we looked at not too long ago, where God is dealing with David, another one of the patriarchs, a man after His own heart. And God loved David, and David loved his God. Now look what God is saying, verse, oh, let's see, verse 12, 2 Samuel 7, verse 12, See, God's not going to intervene in the physical element of death, He's going to die. And thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, in other words, it be His own Son. And God says, I will establish His kingdom. Verse 13, He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever. Remember when we looked at a few programs back, this was the promise of that kingly line that would go all the way from David down to the coming of Christ the King. Here it's all promised, the house of David. Verse 14, I will be His Father, and He shall be My Son, if He commit iniquity. And is He going to? You better believe it, you better believe it, but if He does, if He commits iniquity, I will chasten Him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men. Has Israel experienced that? Why constantly they've been under the disciplining of their God, over and over. All you have to do is go back and read the book of Judges. What is that a story of? A story of a nation that was on a roller coaster. Oh, they would go up to a spiritual high under a righteous holy judge, and He'd die, and what would happen to the nation? Down into the depths of sin and rejection, God would raise up another good judge, and here they'd come again, and they would be blessed, and they would be victorious over their enemies, and then down they went. Up and down, and up and down, see? Yes, God chastised them, but did He ever give up on them? Never. All right, now then, we've seen this all the way through Israel's experience, that God has promised them, and promised them, and promised them a king and a kingdom. He came the first time, they rejected it, they crucified Him, and so the Lord in resurrection power went back to glory. To forget about Israel, no. Like a MacArthur who left the Philippines and said, I will come back, that's exactly what Jesus told the Twelve on the Mount of Olives. He's going back to heaven, but He said, I'm coming back. The angel announced it, if the Lord Himself didn't. And so Israel now then, is approaching the day we feel that their Messiah is going to be coming back. All right, now while you're in the Old Testament, come up to the book of Hosea for a moment. Hosea, beautiful prophecy, Hosea, that's right after Daniel. You've got your major prophets, that's the way I find them anyway. You find Isaiah, and then you've got Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Daniel, and then right after Daniel is the book of Hosea. Chapter 6, Hosea chapter 6, verse 1. Now these are promises, see, these are promises that God has given to the nation through the prophets. Hosea 6, verse 1, y'all got it? Come, let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn, and He will heal us, He hath smitten, He will bind us up. Now watch the language there. What did it mean that He had torn and He had smitten? He had chastised them, He had exercised discipline on them, but what are the last words of that verse? He will bind us up. What does that mean? He's going to heal them. He's going to heal their land. He's going to heal the nation. Now verse 2 and 3, oh, I love them. After two days, now when we speak of prophetic days according to Peter, how long is that? A thousand years. A day is but a thousand years in God's sight, a thousand years is but a day. So I think it's speaking of 2,000 years here. After two days, or 2,000 years, He will revive us. Oh, isn't He doing it? Of course. My land, you go back to pre-World War II, go back to the 30s and all the way back then into the early 1900s and the 1800s, who would have ever dreamed that the Jews would one day have their homeland and a sovereign government? Only Bible scholars, they were writing about it, but no one else ever thought of it. Whenever the Jews would talk to the powers that be in England and America and what have you, they would laugh at them. The English actually offered them a piece of Africa, uninhabitable for the most part, you can have that for a homeland, and they said, No, we don't want a piece of ground in Africa, we want our own homeland, Israel. But here they are. They've been coming back now for the last hundred years, and now since 1948 they've been pretty much an independent state. So after two days, or 2,000 years, He will revive us. In the third day, which takes you into the kingdom of course, in the third day He will raise us up and we shall live where? In His sight, indeed. He's going to be ruling from Jerusalem, and He will be right there in their midst, see? Then verse 3, Oh, and they come into that kingdom economy, then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning. He shall come unto us as the rain, and as the latter and the former rain unto the earth. Now we in America are not so much concerned with the former and the latter rain, but the Middle East, it was everything. See, that's why Israel became a wasteland for thousands of years. They lost the latter rain. They may have some of the earlier rain, but they would never get that latter rain. But now since Israel is a nation, and they're beginning to green up, and it's beginning to blossom as a rose, Israel is beginning to experience the former and the latter rains. In other words, they're getting it in two times of the year instead of one. Well, all these are just simply to show then that when Paul says concerning the elect of Israel that God has not changed His mind. So if you'll come back with me now to Romans chapter 11. Now verse 30, Romans 11, verse 30. For as you in times past have not believed God, see that, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief. Remember what we saw earlier in this chapter? Turn back a page. Go back. The only way you learn is over and over and over, you know. I remember when we first started on television, at least within the first year, there was a mathematics college professor here in Oklahoma who gained almost worldwide acclaim, I guess, because of his teaching tactics. His math students just scored so much higher than almost any place else, and come to find out that it was merely a style of teaching that he used, and I guess it was pretty much like what I do. He would not just teach a mathematical theorem or something and then drop it and go to the next one, but throughout the whole semester he would keep reviewing, see. He would just keep moving ahead, but he'd always go back. Go ahead, but always go back. Well, that's the best way to learn, see. Well, that's what I try to do. I'm not going to apologize for repeating some of these things, because it's the best way to learn. All right, back to chapter 11 now, verse 11. You'll remember the verse when we read it. I say then, have they, the nation of Israel, have they stumbled that they should fall, in other words, be completely out of God's program? God forbid, don't think such a thing. But rather, through their fall, salvation is come to whom? The Gentiles. Oh, a wonder of wonders. Now come back to the last part of the chapter where we just are, and that's exactly what Paul's going to say. Oh, the depth, verse 33, oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Now you see, this is all beyond us. How in the world could He take a covenant people like Israel, give them all the promises that He gave to the patriarchs and through the prophets, and then even through the coming of their Messiah, dealt with them on covenant ground, and then see them crucify the one He gave them, and cry out in total rebellion away with Him, and then have God say, well, because they did that, I'll now send salvation to the Gentiles. Who would have ever thought of anything like that? No one but God. But this is what God did. And so because they rejected everything that God had promised, they have brought about what had to be done for our salvation, and that, of course, was His sacrificial death, and then His burial, and His resurrection. Now then, verse 30, I'm going to hurry a little bit. I'd like to finish the chapter. So He says, "...even though you in times past have not believed God..." I guess I should put it on the board, because I've had several people over the years say this really opened their eyes. It really made them rethink a lot of what they learned, and you're going to recognize it the minute I put it up here. We have two facets. We can believe in God. How many people do that? Just about everybody. Just about everybody, at least in America, where we're so, what shall I say, we're open to the Scriptures and so forth. Most Americans will admit they believe in God, but what's the other one? Believe God. Now that narrows it down. How many people believe God? Because see, that becomes then faith. This doesn't take faith in consideration at all, but this is faith when we take God at His Word. Now that's exactly what we're talking about here. The Gentiles for thousands of years did not believe God. They may have believed in some God, but they did not believe God. And you see, this is where all of a sudden it makes such a difference. When we believe God, we take what He says and we believe it, and that's what? Faith. So when the Scripture says that Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead, what does God expect us to do with it? Believe it. And when we believe it with all our heart, what does God do again? He opens up our whole ability to believe. He comes in, He makes us a new person, and all these things become so easy to comprehend, which before were just so hard to comprehend. Now then in the last few moments, verse 32 again, For God hath concluded them, that is Israel, all in unbelief, because of their total rejection, that He might have mercy upon... How many? All. Now who are the all? Jew and Gentile, the whole human race. Now reading on before they get it off the screen. Oh, I guess it's already gone. All right, now then verse 33, I just read it a moment ago. The depth and the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. We can't even come close to comprehending His wisdom. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. Verse 34, for who hath known the mind of the Lord? Who hath been His consular? Now I think that history can pretty much prove presidents rise and fall, or kings, pretty much based on what? The men around them, see, the men around them. If they've got weak advisers, if they've got people that are constantly getting the president or the king or whatever in hot water, history is not going to be very kind to them are they? All right, God doesn't have that problem. God doesn't need a cabinet. God doesn't need a kitchen cabinet or whatever it was. God doesn't need consulars. He's all the counseling that He ever needed. You remember I always like to use that verse back in Acts, that in the predetermined counsel of God and the foreknowledge of God, what does that mean? Oh, the triune God came together and without any outside counsel, they put the whole thing together and His ways are past human understanding. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported and your gift is appreciated. Thank you and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.