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CHAPTER   9

ROMANS 11

A Message to be Remembered

to Avoid Apostolically Undesired "Ignorance"

In Romans 11, we find that a nation called Israel was cut out of a symbolic tree, standing for operative, covenantal faith in the Lord, and that this was because of unbelief. As in Micah 5:1-3, it was accompanied by rejection and physical violence towards the Messiah, and as in Psalm 22, we are shown the type of flesh-piercing methods used for that, just as in Psalm 16, we are shown God's  testimony not only of power to make life, but power over death, and that with franchise to the people, as in Isaiah 26:19.

Parallel to this, but in the opposite direction, we are advised that Gentile believers will take their place for the time being, as a substitute set, namely one of believers. We as Gentiles are exhorted meanwhile, to watch our ways, for the goodness and severity of God is such that as Israel was cast out of the tree, cut off, so will others be who trivialise, trash and deny the truth of Christ, who as an entity or group might have been in the tree. If it applies to the one body, so to the other.

It is in this atmosphere of withering to fraud, and welcome to faith, in the historical perspective of the series, Israel in, Israel out, Israel out for Gentiles to come in, that we learn a new feature of the spiritual scenario. It is this. It is easy to be ignorant, as the apostle Paul here puts it,  and not to realise that this is not all, but just the prelude. There is a finale also.

In this, in a time of God's appointment, Israel will awaken to its unbelief, and by faith re-enter into the tree from which it was removed. Indeed says Paul, if you who had no part in the tree were successfully grafted into it, how much more will Israel be grafted BACK into what after all is its own native tree from which it was taken away! So, says the apostle, do not indulge in high-mindedness as if you were intrinsically superior. Humble yourselves one and all. Now thus into the tree a body, a nation is to be restored. This, as at the first, is that very body, Israel, for if its removal was grief, what is its restoration but life from the death! Paul exclaims earlier.

What then is the name of the nation which has been subjected to this initial inclusion, just exclusion and is to be granted re-grafting as an entity ? It has a name which the apostle Paul consistently uses of this VERY DESIGNATED AND MULTIPLY MOVED BODY. THAT ? It is ISRAEL. That was, and is, and is treated by Paul both for the removal and restoration as ONE BODY, one identical body, one body to which this happens, and then that. Just as it was the nation, so now it is so. It was to come back to the faith, and as the world buzzes and buses, and busts in its animosity, so Israel extends its sufferings, until the time come, of which Paul declares he would not have us ignorant, when it has its national eyes opened, just as they were shut, "and SO ALL Israel will be saved," both what was before the exclusion, and what is after the re-inclusion.

Now for the entity removed to be restored to its tree, one thing is clear. It has to be THERE to be subject of anything. You can't restore a loan if the money is not there, and you can't restore a nation expressly such, if the nation is not there. Hence Israel is assumed in the period to which Paul refers, to be THERE, a national entity, and thus, having as we learn so often, as in Ezekiel 36-39, Micah 7 and elsewhere, been dispersed, it is there for the restoration. This is precisely the point - the national restoration in that Jerusalem as capital is a pointer to Israel, for what capital has no country ?  - of Christ's declaration in Luke 21:24. Jerusalem the city is to be trodden down by the NATIONS, the rest of this world, its tramplers, and this UNTIL THEIR day is over, as Israel's earlier day was over. THEN WHEN that is done, accordingly, the Gentiles will no longer trample the city which is back to its own people, who had been dispersed in these multiple  movements.

It is of course Zechariah 12-13 which supplies the on-the-spot prediction, if you will, of the conversion and of what it means, its theological significance, spelt out more fully yet by Isaiah 50-55. It is done no less in Ezekiel 36-37. The accompanying power of God for the much abused people of Israel, the victims of aggressive men, is exhibited in sites such as Deuteronomy 32, Micah 7, Isaiah 66. This is epitomised as a world-wide movement quashed as in Psalm 2, 110, and of course, maintained as in Psalm 72, while covered in Revelation 20 and Isaiah 11, 59, 65.

Thus Romans is not only utterly harmonious with the rest of the Bible on these things, but as it were, sings one song in one orchestra of emotion and feeling, of testimony and message, like the British Proms. To fail to learn this song, this scenario in fact, these simple and clear messages, is to be ignorant, and this, Paul would not have you to be. This then is one more way of clashing with the Lord, and not receiving a significant section of His witness. Such defiance of fact also means that the blessing of IIf Peter 1:19 does not come, for here is this word of prophecy being fulfilled in our midst in the contemporary world, and its light and enthusing alike are left, like children, being too weary to finish their nourishing dinner, and eating sweets instead. They may be agreeable, like all false doctrine, but they do not nourish.