ROMANS 11:7\u201310<\/b><\/p>\n
What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened<\/i><\/p>\n
(Romans 11:7)<\/i><\/p>\n
Paul has been discussing God\u2019s remnant, and here he makes the point that it was only the elect who truly heard God\u2019s Word and obeyed it. The rest, he says, were hardened. He quotes Deuteronomy 29:4 and Isaiah 29:10, \u201cGod gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day\u201d (Romans 11:8).<\/p>\n
Every time we hear the Word of God and refuse to respond, something happens to our hearing. A kind of deafness sets in, and we become progressively unable to hear it at all. Every time we stiff-arm the truth, we build up calcium on our hearts and they grow harder and harder. This is the ability of fallen humanity to escape the truth of God\u2019s Word. This frightens me, not only because it describes the pagan, but also because it is true of believers. When we are converted and God gives us ears to hear and hearts to embrace, the problem of deafness is still not eliminated. It is something we struggle with all our lives. As Christians, we have to cultivate a keen sense of hearing, so that we don\u2019t just tune out the things we don\u2019t want to hear.<\/p>\n
The Punishment Fits the Crime<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Verse 8 says that it is God who makes Israel deaf. We have to remember that this deafness is visited on them because they had previously refused to hear. It is a judgment in kind. God says, \u201cYou don\u2019t want to see Me? All right, I\u2019ll make you spiritually blind. You don\u2019t want to hear Me? All right, I\u2019ll make you spiritually deaf.\u201d In this way, God judges them by giving them what they want.<\/p>\n
In verse 9, Paul quotes Psalm 69:22, \u201cMay their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.\u201d We see in this that it was precisely the religious observances of the Jews (their \u201ctable\u201d) that God used against them. They had perverted His feasts, so He used these warped feasts to reinforce them in their blindness.<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
It is a frightening thing to realize that even elements of our worship can become a way of blocking out God\u2019s Word. Do not neglect your worship of God. Today would be a good day to evaluate the meaningfulness of yesterday\u2019s worship. What can you do this week to further enhance your worship experience?<\/p>\n
For further study: Matthew 13:10\u201317; John 9:35\u201341; Ephesians 1:18\u201321<\/i><\/p>\n
tuesday<\/p>\n
september<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROMANS 11:7\u201310 What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened (Romans 11:7) Paul has been discussing God\u2019s remnant, and here he makes the point that it was only the elect who truly heard God\u2019s Word and obeyed it. The rest, he says, were hardened. … Continue reading “GOD\u2019S BLINDING OF ISRAEL”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}