Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
What does it mean for the Jews if God has put his focus on Gentiles?
That question had to be going through many of the Jewish Christian minds in Paul’s day.
By the time Paul wrote Romans, the non-Messianic Jews had all but won the day.
Few Israelites—few Jews—were accepting Jesus as their Messiah and Savior.
The number of Gentile believers far outnumbered the Jewish ones.
So what did this mean for the Jews?
This was what Paul was seeking to answer in chapters 9-11.
After all, he ended chapter 8 with nothing being able to separate anyone from the love of God which is found in Christ Jesus.
Then he starts to talk about Israel’s unbelief and the seeming failure for God to live up to his word, and the seeming injustice of God’s sovereign election.
Much of chapters 9-11 are Paul’s argument against those assumptions of failure and injustice.
The text this morning is no different.
So what does it mean for the Jews if God has put his focus on Gentiles?
Paul asks this with three of his own questions.
Does it mean Israel hasn’t heard?
Does it mean Israel didn’t understand?
Does it mean Israel is shoved out of the way?
In fact, it doesn’t mean any of those things.
So then, what does it mean?
That’s what we are going to look at today.
Israel Hasn’t Heard?
The first question Paul asks and answers is simply, “Has Israel not heard?”
Could this be an excuse for the Israelites in Paul’s day? “Hey!
We never heard that the Messiah came!
Don’t blame us!”
But Paul wrote that this was not a good argument.
And he uses a passage of Scripture to prove his point.
He quotes Psalm 19:4.
But here’s the problem with Paul using this Scripture.
This passage has nothing to do with the gospel message and nothing to do with the Messiah at all.
Psalm 19 is a wonderful chapter of the Bible.
It deals with both general revelation and special revelation.
The first six verses of the chapter are general revelation, which means there is enough revealed in nature to know that there’s a God.
We did not all just get here from some cosmic accident.
Nature, everywhere proclaims that there is a God.
“Their voice, nature’s voice, has gone to all the earth, and nature’s words to the ends of the world.”
So no gospel message meant.
No messianic message is meant in this verse.
So why does Paul use it as a proof text?
And we know it was a quote because Paul quotes it verbatim.
It’s not some mere coincidence that he used similar language.
It was exact language.
I think, and there are various reasons that people give, but I think that Paul is quoting the passage, but is not seeking to go back as if to say that Psalm 19:4 was referencing the gospel.
The reason I say that is because there is no indication.
Paul does not say, “As it is written,” or “As Isaiah wrote,” or “Moses said,” etc.
He quotes it out of no where.
Thus, Paul is using Scriptural language to establish a fact even though he wasn’t specifically referring back to Psalm 19.
He wrote something similar, but in non-Scriptural language in
What Paul was saying is that the gospel message was everywhere.
One would have to purposefully ignore the message.
It was pervasive; it was ubiquitous.
This wasn’t an excuse to not tell the gospel.
We just saw last week that we are to do that and we see Paul pointing out in Romans 15:20 that his plan was to go to Spain because it had not been preached there.
But neither can it be an excuse for those Jews at judgment day when they stand before God’s throne.
We’ve already seen that those without the law—the Gentiles—have no excuse on judgment day.
We saw that the Jews who had the law also have no excuse.
But now we see that the Jews who cry foul because they didn’t hear have no excuse.
The gospel is everywhere.
The proof that it is everywhere is that every country has some type of policy regarding it: it’s either legal to proclaim it or illegal.
Some promote it.
Some ignore it.
Some criminalize it.
But the gospel is everywhere.
This doesn’t make our job of evangelism any less necessary.
But it certainly can make it easier.
The gospel is at our fingertips 24 hours a day.
We’ve got tracts, but better than that, we’ve got YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Gab, a million other ways to tell the gospel.
We can text someone, send a video to someone, video chat with someone.
We’ve got the Bible in every language on our phones.
Not hearing is no excuse.
But neither is us not telling.
Israel Hasn’t Understood?
So the first question was answered.
Has Israel heard?
Yes.
Everyone has.
The gospel is everywhere.
What then is the second question?
Has Israel understood?
Going all the way back to Moses, Paul points out that Israel was told from the beginning what God was doing.
If they missed it, they then had Isaiah to reemphasize what God said to Moses.
In essence, the Gentiles, not any particular nation, but the Gentiles who were rebellious and ignorant of who God was and is in the first place, would suddenly be courted by God.
The consequence of God courting non-Jews would be that the Jews would become angry.
They’d be jealous.
And this is exactly what we see in Acts.
How many times was Paul beaten, stoned, run out of town for preaching to the Gentiles even though the Jews refused to listen?
When Moses said what he said, you’ll read that Israel was going after other gods.
They were cheating on God and provoking him to jealousy.
Likewise, God would court those outside of Israel.
Isaiah was saying the same thing.
Throughout Israel’s history, they had continuously rejected the God who saved them.
During Moses’s time, Joshua’s time, the Judges’ time, the king’s time, and even after the exile in some ways.
When God sent his Son, they rejected him too.
Jesus told a parable to explain it.
The Jews would not listen.
They understood that they would lose the blessings of being God’s chosen if they refused to believe.
They were told over and over again.
They were told in no uncertain terms.
It was not that they didn’t understand.
It is that they did not care or they did not believe what God had said.
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