There is a false teaching that has been promoted by the Catholics and accepted by other groups as well. That theory is called “Replacement Theology”. The Catholics have a priesthood and tried to copy some of the Old Testament Jewish customs. Of course they have distorted what the Bible teaches. They have tried for a long time to convince the world that they are the replacement for the nation of Israel. They tried to wipe out the Jews and they worked closely with Hitler to accomplish that goal. They enlisted the help of the Muslims in that task as well.
It is obvious that they failed at that effort. The Catholics are a false religion and have been from their beginning. They reject the true God and thus they underestimate Him. One of their tools to gain greater power and control is deception. They are trying to make it appear as though they are the friends of the Jews. They have bought up Biblical sites in Israel and they milk tourists of their money to get them to stop at those sites.
The nation of Israel is spiritually blind and they cannot see how they are being taken advantage of by false religions. The book of the Revelation describes the Catholic religion in chapter 17. The Catholics are proud to depict themselves as the woman riding upon a beast. They are deceived and will be destroyed by the Lord in the future.
In our text, God directed Paul to remind us that God has not cast off the Jews. Paul declared that he was an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. Paul had a direct connection to Israel’s first king. His name from birth was Saul as well. God change Paul (Saul) from the inside out when he was saved, and God also changed his name.
The fact is that Paul as a Jew, was converted and many other Jews had also been converted. The book of Romans was addressed to saved Jews and Gentiles in Rome. In it Paul addressed true saints and also the rebellious Jews but also reminded the lost Gentiles of the importance of true, Biblical salvation.
In verse 2 of our text, Paul reminded the readers that God had not cast away His people. He chose Israel to be His people. God made a promise to Abram (Abraham) and God is faithful to His promises. His name and character are at stake and He is completely trustworthy.
The word translated as “foreknew” means “to know beforehand”. Notice the context of that word in our text. It is important to let Scripture be our authority, not some lost person or group. John Calvin was a false teacher who was trained by Augustine. Augustine was a Catholic “doctor” who was used to “educate” gullible people in Catholic doctrine. He trained John Calvin through his writings. Calvin used them to develop his heresies. The Calvinist “TULIP” is a work of deception. It is false teaching and has been adopted in whole or in part by many different religious groups.
As we notice in verse 2 of our text and in the context of that verse, the foreknowledge of God is to the nation of Israel. Paul was not talking of God’s foreknowledge of himself, but rather of the nation of Israel. It is true that God knows everything about everybody, however, when God is speaking of foreknowledge here, He is talking of the nation of Israel. God chose Abraham to be the father of the nation of Israel. We have already learned that not all those who are of the physical seed of Abraham are of the spiritual seed of Abraham. There are still saved Jews today, but the nation of Israel is not a God-fearing nation today. The spiritual seed of Abraham consists of both Jews and Gentiles that have been saved through repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of the Tribulation, the nation of Israel will be a God-fearing nation. God is not naming names here, but is speaking of the people who will make up that nation at that time. God has not kept anyone from having the opportunity to be saved. He is just to all.
In the last part of verse 2 Paul referenced Elijah in I Kings 19:14-18. The word translated as “intercession” in our verse means to “entreat (in favor or against)”. It can have the meaning of complaining about someone. That is what we see Elijah doing in I Kings 19:14. He was complaining about the wickedness of his own people. In fact as we look at Romans 11:2, you notice the last phrase says: “how he maketh intercession to God against Israel”. Elijah was not speaking highly of Israel in that text. He was pleading with God against his own people. Verses 3&4 also make this very obvious.
Elijah had been a faithful prophet as God required of him. Yet the nation was against him. Jezebel was threatening to kill him. The majority of the people were well indoctrinated by her wickedness. They saw him do that great miracle on Mount Carmel. They also saw how God provided rain after more than 3 years of severe drought. Yet Jezebel wanted to kill him and he had to flee for his life. The people were not going to defend him. He assumed he was all alone. God rebuked him and showed him that He had 7,000 prophets that had not bowed the knee to Baal.
In verse 4 Paul rehearsed the answer of God to Elijah, as we just noted. In verse 5 God continued to direct Paul to draw a point from the above illustration. In the time of the apostle Paul, there was still a remnant of the nation of Israel, the nation that God had chosen, who were faithful to Him. They were saved by grace. At the time that Paul was writing this, the saved Jews were part of local churches. The temple was soon going to be destroyed and for almost 2,000 years, there has been no temple in Jerusalem. God is now building local churches where believers, Jew or Gentile (Greek), come together to worship Him and to learn of Him. Lost people are also invited to attend a true local church where they can learn the truth and be forgiven and saved and then serve the true and living God.
As we will see further, God has set Israel aside as the vehicle through which He would seek to draw others to Himself. Jesus Christ announced a new entity, which was described as a mystery in some of Paul’s writings. The “mystery” was as Jesus announced it in Matthew 16:18; the true church. In the context of Matthew 16, Jesus built one church and that one was in Jerusalem. The apostles were told to go out from there and establish many more churches. Thus, in the book of Acts and in the Epistles we read of many other churches being established. It was not just up to the apostles to start new Bible-believing churches. Timothy was saved and trained by the apostle Paul to be the pastor of the church at Ephesus. Titus was sent to Crete to straighten out the mess that was in that city.
In the last book of the Bible, Jesus Christ addressed 7 local churches that needed His attention. There were others, but He chose those 7. All saints can learn from Jesus’ Words in Revelation 2&3 and elsewhere. It is important to note that Jesus Christ is the Head of every true local church; not of every place that calls itself a church, but of every true local church.
Back in our text, Paul was addressing those Jews and Gentiles that made up the remnant of saved people in his day as well as in the future. During this dispensation which is sometimes referred to as the “Church Age”, God is drawing people to Himself through the faithful witness of true churches. True saints need to be a part of a true local church through which they can grow and go out and evangelize the world and help others to see the importance of knowing the truth.
Those who are saved are saved by God’s grace, not because they are “more deserving than others.” Keep in mind that it was the lost Jews who prided themselves in being Jews and they assumed they were just a little better than everyone else. They were nothing without Christ, and they did not want to believe that.
We have noted before that Jesus addressed some of the “elite” Jews in John 8. They prided themselves in being Abraham’s seed, but Jesus exposed them as hypocrites because they wanted to kill Him. Jesus declared that they were of their father the devil. He spoke the truth to give them another opportunity to see who they really were. They could change that by turning to Him as their Messiah and Saviour. A few did, but many continued to build their hatred toward Him and eventually cried out: “crucify Him, crucify Him.” They were happy to see the Lord Jesus suffer and die on the cross of Calvary. They failed to accept the fact that He rose 3 days later, victorious over sin and death. A few, like Saul (Paul) were converted shortly after Jesus ascended back to heaven. Others, both Jew and Gentile have been saved since that time.
The book of the Revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ points out that in the time of the Tribulation, God will turn His focus back to Israel. Israel will suffer greatly during the Tribulation. Their suffering then will break them as a nation, and at the end of that 7 year period, the nation of Israel that is alive at that time, will turn to God and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Messiah and Saviour. They will do so by the grace of God. None will be forced to turn to Him, but they will finally have witnessed enough suffering, that they will stop fighting and trust in God’s promise to them and be saved.
At that time, the antichrist and the false prophet will be cast into the lake of fire and the wicked people will be destroyed and cast into hell, awaiting the great white throne judgment where they will be judged along with all the wicked, and cast into the lake of fire.
The day of grace is now.
Pastor Bartel