ADDRESSES ON ROMANS
Many Gentiles are just like that. It is amazing what some of them believe. And if they continue rejecting the light as it is in Christ, this blindness will come upon them. It is a serious thing for God to shine light upon the human heart, and for that heart to reject the light. Have you ever been in a light room, just before entering a dark one? Your blindness was double because you had been in the light. The hardest people to reach for Christ are those who hear the Gospel over and over, but reject its message. This is true of the Gentile, as well as of the Jew. GOD'S TWOFOLD PURPOSE IN ISRAEL'S BLINDNESS 11: 11, 25 Verse 11 asks another question: "Have they stumbled that they should fall?" And again Paul answers his own question by the oft--repeated words, "God forbid." For two reasons God has permitted Israel's national blindness for a time: ( 1 ) That "through their fall salvation" might "come unto the Gentiles": and (2 ) "for to provoke them (Israel ) to jealousy." As we have already seen, verse 25 reiterates the first of these statements, "that blindness in part is happened to Israel. until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in... This means "the full number" of Gentiles in the Bride of Christ, which is His church. And when that Body is complete, then God will deal once more with Israel as a nation. Then her .restoration will be glorious, in the millennial reign of her Messiah upon the earth. Therefore, Paul argues, "God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew." Not only is Paul himself "a pat.... tern" of their glorious deliverance: not only is the "remnant according to the election of grace" a pledge of their national salvation: but God's purpose in letting Israel go on for a time in blindness is also for her good- "to provoke her to jeal-- ousy," while at the same time blessing is going out to all the Gentile world. God ever loves His ancient people: He has [Page 211
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