Why Israel's Fall Opened Heaven's Door for the Gentiles

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 go right back to where we left off in our last program which would be Romans chapter 11, and we were commenting on verse 9, and I just about ran out of time. But anyway, we'll pick up there again, and I notice they're ready to put the books on the screen, so we want to remind our television audience every day we have new listeners, that all the past programs are available on VCR tapes. We've put 12 programs on one 6-hour tape, and we can send them postage paid anywhere for $30. Now remember that's a 6-hour tape, 12 programs. And then the little books are a transcription of each 6-hour tape, and we can send them postage paid for $6. Now I always qualify that anytime people in prison write for these books, and we get a lot of them, we send them free to the prisons. If missionaries want to use them in their ministry overseas, we send them free to missionaries. So we do send out a lot of these books free, but the $6 hopefully will keep covering our costs, because as I've said so often, no one underwrites us. We just barely pay our bills it seems, and the Lord always provides. We've never asked for money on this program, and I hope we never have to. But nevertheless we do have to watch our budget. It costs money to print the books, it costs money to get the tapes out, and that's all we ask is enough to cover our expenses. We appreciate all how we appreciate your letters and your financial support. We couldn't do it without you. Mail time is the high point of our day, and boy the other day we had a stack of letters that were just unreal, and of course I look for the letters more than I do the checks. I just love to read people's letters, so those of you out in television, if you've got the time, why don't you just write us a note, because we do appreciate them so much. Let's get back where we left off then in Romans chapter 11. We were commenting on verse 9 where David said in the Psalms, Let their table be made a snare, and I made reference to it that they were literally as a nation feasting at the very table of God Himself. But it became a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense. And then as a result of their unbelief, their rejecting of all the good things that Jehovah had showered upon them, the conclusion was, "...let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back always." That is their spiritual eyes. So in their unbelief God just made sure that they really wouldn't believe by putting a spiritual blindness upon the nation. Now remember I've taught over the years that God deals with the Jew on two levels, national and individual. Nationally they are blinded, waiting for the return of their Messiah at the end of the tribulation, when all of a sudden the nation, the remnant will be saved. But today in the age of grace, nationally they are blinded, but an individual Jew has every opportunity to believe the Gospel. So don't ever feel sorry for the Jew that he has no chance. Yes he does. He has just as much chance at believing the Gospel of God's grace as we Gentiles. But on the national basis, as God dealt with them from bringing them out of Egypt, and He dealt with them on the basis of a nation of people, that has ended, and He has blinded them nationally, but individually they can still come in. Now verse 11. Ephesians 2. Now verse 11. I say then, have they stumbled as a nation of people, as the covenant people, have they stumbled that they should fall out of God's program, that they are completely removed from anything more to do with their God? Well look at his answer. God forbid, don't think such a thing. They haven't fallen out of God's program, God has simply set them aside for a period of time. Do you remember when we were back there in the book of Acts, and I use it as a picture then that even in Acts where you don't really expect to see prophecy, do you remember when Paul first started his ministry and he was out there on the island of Cyprus, and Simon Bar-Jonah, which was a Jew, tried to keep Paul from ministering to that Roman deputy, and what did Paul do? He gave him a blindness, but not permanent, he said for a season. Now that was just indicative of the nation of Israel. They too have been blinded, not forever, but for a season. Now it's been a long season in human reckoning, it's been over 1900 years, but it's not going to last forever. One day, and we trust we're getting closer and closer, as time runs out, Israel will once again have her spiritual eyes opened. Now then the verse that we're dealing with, verse 11. But rather through their fall, because the nation of Israel rejected her King, and her Messiah, and her Redeemer, God in turn went to the Gentiles with this program of grace unheard of. Beyond human comprehension, how that the Holy, Righteous God of Glory could use something as graphic and as awful as that Roman cross to bring about a Gospel that He could send out to the Gentiles free for nothing. Without work, without religion, without ritual, without a priesthood, it was a Gospel that merely had to be believed. Now that's what most people can't comprehend, it's too simple. But this is the way God intended it, so that no one, Jew or Gentile can ever say, "...I just couldn't measure up, I couldn't reach that, I couldn't attain it." No one can say that. It's out there for everyone and anyone, because Israel fell. Now we were just talking at break over a cup of coffee, and I know this is strictly hypothetical, and as one gentleman in my class told me one time, he said, "...less you can't ever talk hypothesis when it comes to God's dealing." And I agree, but nevertheless, from the human standpoint, hypothetically you see, if Israel would have accepted the Christ, if they would have embraced Him as their Redeemer and their Messiah and their King, if, hypothetically, what would have happened? Oh, they could have had the King and the Kingdom, but according to the Old Testament prophecies, had they done that, then what could have Israel done? They could have evangelized those Gentiles, and just brought them in by the millions to a knowledge of their God, that was their prospect. But that's hypothetical, in the foreknowledge of God it couldn't happen, He had to die. And so the nation of Israel rejected Him, they crucified Him, and they continued to reject Him in the early Acts, although Peter and the eleven preached their hearts out. And finally, when Israel proved that they were not going to believe, God raised up that other little Jew, that rebel, that raging bull, who hated Jesus of Nazareth, and saved Him by grace. That is the epitome of grace, is the salvation of Saul of Tarsus. And then He told Saul right up front, before he even got out of Damascus, "...I'm going to send you far hence where? To the Gentiles." Israel is going to go out into a spiritual blindness, but you're going to go to the Gentiles. And so this is what this verse is saying, that because Israel rejected all of those Old Testament promises, Israel rejected her Messiah and her King, and crucified Him, what they really did was opened up the windows of heaven for us Gentiles, whose forefathers were pagan. Every one of us, if we could follow our family tree all the way back, we'd find that every one of our ancestors were steeped in idolatry, they were steeped in the occult, in mythology or whatever it might be. Israel alone had the true knowledge of the true God. But God now has done something totally different, and He sent this apostle out amongst those pagan Gentiles, and they suddenly began to just almost swarm to the Gospel. They had a spiritual hunger that Israel could not comprehend. And of course if you know the book of Acts, every place that Paul went and preached the Gospel when the Jews were rejected, and he'd go to those pagan Gentiles, what would those Gentiles do? Oh they'd embrace it, they were thrilled by it. Then in turn what did the Jew do? Oh he hated them, and the Jew hated the Gentile that they were infringing upon their God. And so they were the chief opponents of Christianity. Now it's amazing how human nature works. As the Jew then became the chief opponent of Gentiles being saved, in time how did the Gentile react then to the Jew? Began to hate them. Now let's look at this verse, see this is where human nature goes contrary to the will of God. Now verse 11, continuing on. Have they stumbled that they should fall, Israel? Well don't think such a thing. But rather through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles, don't stop, to provoke them, the Jew, to what? To jealousy. Now all you've got to do is go back to a couple of kids in high school, and they're infatuated and they're dating, and they're just having a great little love affair, but all of a sudden there's a falling out. And I dare tell you, unless kids have changed remarkably more than I think, what's one or the other of them going to immediately start doing in order to win their little love back? Well they're going to date somebody else. Why? To promote jealousy. Now this is exactly what God intended to do. God was going to turn to the Gentile with the idea that Israel would get jealous. Hey, they're taking my place, I better wake up and get back to where I belong. But contrary to what God intended, it went the other way, and not only did it turn Israel in anger against the Gentiles, they precipitated in return the persecution of the Gentiles against them, and all you have to do is go back and read human history. Ever since Christianity became more or less the official empire religion way back in the early centuries, what did they do to the Jew? Persecuted them, killed them by the thousands, chased them out of every place where they had established a community. Why? Because they were the Christ killers. They were the enemies of God, and some of our early Reformers said horrible things about the Jew. And it was all a human reaction to circumstances. That isn't the way God intended it. He intended it to turn Israel to Himself by promoting a jealousy. Now in verse 12, it says, "...now if the fall of them..." In other words they are rejecting everything, and God is setting them aside and turning to the Gentiles. "...if the fall of them be the riches of the world..." Now the word world here in the Greek is kosmos, which means the world system. It isn't talking about terra firma, the earth, it's talking about the human system, the politics and the economy, and the world population, predominantly of Gentiles of course. So if the fall of this nation of Israel out of God's program for them, is going to bring about the riches of the world, now I'm not talking about the riches of wealth and money and gold and silver, we're talking about spiritual riches. And see that's what we as Gentiles have enjoyed. Whether we're poor as church mice, as we saw down in Haiti, oh you can't imagine the poverty, you can't imagine how hungry those poor people are, and yet what did they have? Oh a spiritual joy, I wish you could have heard those people sing, they just raised the roof. Why? They had that joy unspeakable in spite of their poverty. Now that's what Paul is alluding to when he says, that the fall of them created the spiritual riches of the Gentile world. And it's true, never lose sight of the fact that our forefathers were steeped in idolatry. They were steeped in paganism and superstition and fear. They didn't have the freedom that we have as believers. I always tell women, the greatest feminist movement that ever happened to the human race was Christianity. That's what set women free. My land you go back into ancient history and into those pagan cultures, who did all the work? The women. Who did all the child raising? The women. They did it all. Why? I can remember seeing little old 8mm film from missionaries coming home from the mission fields back when I was a kid, and the women were doing it all. They were planting the crops, they were harvesting, they were grinding the grain, they were washing the clothes, they were taking care of the kids, and where were the men? Sitting up against some hut drinking hooch, getting drunk. But see Christianity changed all that. Christianity brought the woman up to the place of respect, and on an even keel with mankind, and it's been abused of course. But this is the riches that Paul is talking about, that Christianity has just set people free. Again I'm logical, and I look at things logically as well as spiritually. Have you ever stopped to wonder, why did the western civilization explode and bring their standard of living 10 times higher than any other place on earth? Why? Christianity. Christianity. Just stop and look at it for a moment. As Paul went across the Aegean Sea into Greece, the Gospel went to Europe, and Europe became then the breeding ground of all of our inventions, and our men of science, and you go back into every bit of it, and it either began on the continent of Europe, or in England, or as they came over to America. And so all of our technology, almost without exception, were to come out of western civilization which had been predominantly Christian. Why? Because Christianity set people free. It loosed them from the superstitions of the pagan world. It loosed them from all of the hang ups, and the detriment to women, and so forth. Christianity did it. And so we better thank our Lord that we too have been brought under this Christian influence rather than under some of these pagan religions that do nothing but keep their people subservient, and in ignorance, and in superstition. You don't believe me? Go to the library. Get history books. It's in there just as plain as day. So often times we just don't stop to think. If the fall of them be the riches of the world, the diminishing of them, putting them out in a spiritual blindness, taking away their homeland, taking away their priesthood, and their religion, and their temple, and if the diminishing of them brings the riches of the Gentiles, oh now here it comes, how much more, how much more their fullness, they've never attained it yet, they've never attained the fullness that God has in store for them, but it's coming. Don't you ever sell the Jew down the river, it's coming or they're going to go through some horrible times. You can already see it in the little nation of Israel, they're being backed into the corner a little bit tighter all the time, and this is why they're so frantically trying to make peace. Now as I told one of my classes the other night, Israel today is no different than Israel back at the time of Samuel. What was the problem with Israel when Samuel was the last judge? Oh they said, Samuel not anything against you, but we want to be like the nations around us. We don't want to be different anymore, we want to be like the rest of the Gentile nation. We want a king, and Samuel said, now stop and think. If you get a king you're going to be taxed to death, if you get a king he's going to draft your kids, if you get a king he's going to put his thumb on you, not any matter. We want to be like the rest of the world. Israel is no different today. The government of Israel tonight is frantically seeking to be accepted by the Gentile world. They want their economy to just mesh with the European common market, they want to be out there competing with the Gentile nations of the world, and God says, no you're not. You are a separated people, and they haven't learned their lesson. And so as they try to assimilate, and as they try to become just another member of the family of nations, they're getting deeper and deeper into the hole they're digging for themselves, and they're getting backed into the corner, and one day soon, and I think we're getting there closer, and I'll keep emphasizing this as long as I live, we're getting closer and closer to the day when Israel will have no hope except the coming of their king. And he will come. Oh, they're going to accept the false king first, we know that. Jesus said it in John's Gospel, I have come in my name and you reject me, now I'm paraphrasing, but he says another shall come in his name and you're going to embrace him. Well that's the Antichrist, and sure they will. They're getting ready for it. I've told you more than once, I've had Jewish people tell me what they're looking for in their Messiah, and they can't comprehend that the Messiah is going to be God, he's going to be a man, but he's going to be a superman, he's going to be somebody that has a lot of military apropos, he's going to have a lot of economic going for him, he's going to have charisma, he's going to be able to do all the things that they think a superman can do. And you know what I tell them? You're describing the Antichrist, but they don't see that. So what is left for the nation? Their fullness. Oh, all of the fulfilling of those Old Testament covenant promises are still coming, they've been withheld now for almost 2,000 years, but God hasn't forgotten them, they're still coming. Now verse 13, don't lose sight that just because Paul has been dealing with the nation of Israel for three chapters, don't lose sight of what he is. You highlight this verse, you lock it into your memory bank, because this is an important verse, I think one of the most important in all of Paul's epistles. For I speak to you Gentiles, oh he's talking about Israel for three chapters, but who is he talking to? The Gentile believers at Rome, the Gentile believers in our own time. And he says, I speak to you Gentiles inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles. Now I know one or two of the newer translations remove the the, and they put in an and. When I first saw that my hair stood on end, because that is a complete violation of the text and it changes Paul's whole position. If he is just another apostle, then he is a liar, because he claims in all of his letters as he defends his apostleship, that it was to him and him alone that God revealed these great doctrines of grace. And see how subtly they can change the meaning of a verse? But he says, I am the apostle of the Gentiles. And that's not the half of it, he said, I magnify my office. You know what that means? He was never going to back down from his role of being God's man for the Gentile world. You know I tell people all the time, you on your prayer knees better thank God for this little Jew who was willing to suffer all the things that a human being can suffer in order to get the Gospel to you and I as Gentiles. Oh that verse we use so often, let's look at it again. Let's go to 2 Peter, and I don't know if pastors take the time to listen to me or not, but if they do, I hope and I pray that if they won't get anything else from my teaching, but they'll get the idea that they have to get into Paul's letters. You are not going to see a viable living ministry if you do all your preaching and teaching from the four Gospels. It's just not back there, and you have to leave those things behind, which I call the milk of the Word. And Paul himself in Hebrews says that we're to desire the meat, and we're to get into that which is strong, which will help us to grow and get off that milk bottle. I used to tell my Sunday school kids when they'd come in years ago, and they'd come in and I'd tell those kids, throw your milk bottle away, you're through with it. We're going to start eating t-bone steaks and potatoes and vegetables. Well that's what the meat of the Word is all about. Now look at what 2 Peter 3.15 says, and Peter is writing now, shortly before he's martyred. These little epistles are written way at the end of his life, and he says... 2 Peter 3.15 Now that's Romans through Hebrews, they're all bunched together in your New Testament. Romans through Hebrews, speaking in them of these things, that is salvation, in which in these epistles are some things hard to be understood. Good old Peter says that, years and years after he had experienced that earthly ministry. And he says, in which are things hard to be understood, and which they that are unlearned and unstable rest, or twist, and my we see that every day, how they twist the Scriptures, and Paul says when they do that, they make it another gospel. And the anathema of a righteous God rests upon these people when they do it. And they twist the Scriptures to their own destruction. But you know what the sad part is? It isn't just to their own, it's to all their people that are under them. Every time somebody twists the Scriptures to their people, whether it's a small congregation or large or whatever, they are not only establishing their own destruction, but those that are listening to them. And so we have to come back and we have to search the Scriptures. Peter tells us, get back to the writing of Paul. I read you a quote here I think in one of our last tapings, where a former president of Princeton University, a man of intellect, said it's either back, back, back to the doctrines of Paul, or it's on, on, on to atheism and despair. And of course when I read that I knew right away that he must have been a long time back, and so I called Princeton, and sure enough from 1888 to 1902 was when he held the office of president of Princeton. But see he had it straight. We have to get back to the letters of Paul, because he is the apostle of the Gentiles. The Holy Spirit prompted him to say it. And so whenever someone calls or writes and says, I want to start reading my Bible more, where should I go? You know what I tell them? You start with Romans chapter 1, and you read Romans until you're blue in the face, then go on to maybe one of his other epistles. 7-4-5-5-2 That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 7-4-5-5 -2 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.