We have been looking at the mysteries that are found in the New Testament. These mysteries reveal things to us that we never could figure out on our own. These are the secrets of God that He has revealed to us. We spent the last three broadcasts looking at the mystery of God’s wisdom, a very important mystery about life. Let’s move on to something very different today looking at Romans 11. We are looking at the mystery of the partial hardening of Israel.
Romans 11:25 says, “For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery – so that you will not be wise in your own estimation – that a partial hardening has happened in Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.” Each of the mysteries unravel some piece of information, something we want to know and something we can’t figure out. The question is: What ever happened to Israel? If you are a reader of the Bible, you know that Israel plays a major part of the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is Jewish literature, Jewish Scriptures, and it pertains almost exclusively, or at least wrapped around the Jewish people. We find all the way from Genesis 12, when God called out Abraham to form the Jewish nation, going right to the end of the Old Testament, that the Jews are front and center in all things.
In the gospels, that begins to change as we find that the Jewish nation. Of course, when Jesus came, He came to His own people and was born to a Jewish family. It says in John 1:11, “He came to His own, and those who were his own did not receive Him.” So, the Jewish people rejected Christ and the gospel witness. All four gospels show the consistent rejection, by the Jewish people, of Jesus Christ. So, that is where we leave the gospels and Jesus is ascended. In the book of Acts, we find a transitioning away from Israel to a large extent and more and more toward the Gentile nations. Paul becomes an apostle to the Gentiles, and the Gentile world begins to receive the gospel as most of the Jewish people begin to back off. The Epistles are mixed, we deal with Jews and Gentiles, but increasingly, the Gentiles begin to monopolize the church. They have more Gentiles saved than Jews . . .
