Well, I had a response to my last post which has prompted me to write more. In the previous post I included an excerpt from a letter that Paul had written to the Romans. In this letter Paul states that "I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits;" and then goes on to say that we have salvation for a time, but then "all Israel shall be saved".
I did not post some of the verses that appear earlier in the chapter. Look at Romans 11:11-12
"I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. 12Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?"
This is what I believe is critical to our "rightly dividing the word of truth". "yourbrother" commented on it in the last post. I won"t quote him because he started with a maybe and I want to be more emphatic. I know that this will hurt the pride of some people and it will fly against the "mainstream" religious teachers of today. However, until shown otherwise, I believe it to be vital to correctly determining our doctrine.
The Bible is intended for the Jews, we are temporarily reaping the benefit of their unbelief. Now maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal on the surface, but it is! You see, we cannot have proper doctrine if we do not know where we fit into God's eternal scheme. God revealed it in the Old Testament with the prophets. Because I said that I was going to share out of the book of Malachi in the next few posts, I will use some verses out of his book to demonstrate this.
In Malachi 1:5 God shares his intent. "And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel." He then reprimands the Jews for giving him poor offerings. He says in verse 10 that he has "no pleasure" in them and that he won't "accept an offering" at their hands. In verse 11 he says "For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts."
The Lord then proceeds to "rip" the Jews for their behavior and for following other gods. This goes on for almost two whole chapters. He talks about sending them a "messenger" and he talks of sending them "the messenger of the covenant" (3:1) but he says " who may abide the day of his coming?" He tells them that he would like to bless them, but they are too busy robbing him of what he is due. At the end of chapter three though, we see these words: "16Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.
I am tempted to add in here all of chapter 4 but I will save it for later. Instead, let's look ahead to the book of Romans again. "salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy."
Let me ask you, according to God, why have we been offered salvation, where do we fit in, and who is the Bible written for?
Before everyone gets upset at me, I want you to understand that I believe all of our doctrine for this age is to be found in the Bible. I believe that God loves us. I believe that we have salvation through Christ's death burial and resurrection. I believe that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for my sin. I believe that I will spend eternity with God. I also believe that my opportunity for salvation is not all about me, it is about God and a covenant that he made with Israel.
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11 comments:
I understand that God's plan is all about the Jews. But why couldn't the Bible (or at least part of it) have been written just for us?
Just for us, about us, or for us? I have found things to be more complicated than this. There are parts of the Bible that are for us, though I would not say they are just for us (non-Jewish believers) because the intent (according to Paul) is to provoke the Jews to jealousy. We will certainly get our doctrine from these parts, though God has a greater plan.
The interesting thing is that there is a much broader part of the Bible that is about us. There are many prophecies in the Old Testament that point toward Gentile believers. One of them was included in this post.
From which catagory do we get our doctrine?
Now you bring into question what our role is as individuals based on who scripture is for and what our role is as gentile believers collectively. What does this mean our job is in everyday life as believers?
Doctrine would come from the parts that explain how we ended up ever getting to be a part of the plan in the first place.
And to answer the question that you named your post with... don't you have an obligation to say it in church?
Do I have the obligation?
Here is the difficulty that I run into. The things that we are talking about I cannot teach in one or two settings. These things have been neglected (or rejected) by the church for the last century. The audience that I have does not study things out for themselves. They prove, or disprove, their biblical positions based on man. If I teach something different than what they have heard their entire lives, they are not going to the scriptures to see if those things are so, they are going to a commentary, or a Bible Professor, or a previous Pastor. It would be too much to ask them to look into it themselves.
After all, they could come to a wrong conclusion. It is much safer to trust in someone who is more educated than themselves.
Do people still study the Bible for themselves or is it too dangerous? Haven't we already learned all there is to know? What is the likelihood of anything being discovered that hasn't already been found and either accepted or rejected?
I am bordering on dispensationalism which (as you know) went out of date about 125 years ago.
I would like to learn more about it going out of date. What information do you have on dispensationalism prior to the past century? Thanks.
Let me apologize. I should have said "neglected (or rejected) by the church over the last century"
Here is a link to the question of it being out of date. Please read it in its entirety.
http://www.pre-trib.org/article-view.php?id=29
At the end of the article he speaks of the church's response to dispensational views.
I need to look up another source as well, I believe it was a systematic theology book, where the author claimed that dispensationalism had been disproven in the early 1900's (of course he never gave evidence as to why he felt that way)
I was actually taught dispensations in 2 different classes in college. (Just like your link explains) But they're only taking it as far as the Jews haven't been completely replaced by the gentile church. It doesn't go as far as separating Christ's teachings for the Kingdom vs. Paul's teachings for the gospel of grace.
You are going to have a difficult time finding someone that will teach that Christ was teaching only about the Kingdom. Because Jesus Christ is OUR Lord and Saviour we feel that his teaching has to be for us. People feel that if they say his teaching was for the Kingdom that they are somehow discounting what he had to say. They are worried they will be minimizing the role that he should play in our lives.
Where do you find the balance?
Pastor Jon, you have come a long way in your understanding and boldness in teaching since 2008!
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