Or, How Israel Fulfilled Prophecy by Refusing to Believe It
Scripture: Romans 10:18-21
Date: April 16, 2023
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Isaiah was the first to write that “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). Habakkuk picked it up, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). There is no sea without water, and there will be no square inch of ignorance of, let alone rebellion against, God. Those who already have the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6) long for the days when true knowledge and worship of God is unchallenged.
We are tempted to act like the apparent ignorance about this knowledge is too great a chasm to bridge, and/or man’s modern rebellion against this knowledge is too entrenched. Discouragement takes as much effort as falling down the stairs; anyone can be discouraged when they look for sin. Sin abounds.
Yet even with such straightforward and hopeful prophecy many Christians have learned pessimism in the name of the Lord and we have taken up the worst worldview. We have been taught to doubt the prompt fulfillment of His Word, and we have become like a group of characters that Bunyan might have named the Little-faithed. We have been taught as if patience in a sovereign is a passive fatalism. Such negativity assumes the worst about God.
But God is not busy elsewhere. He is never without a witness to Himself and His glory. There is already no place on the planet that can claim pure cluelessness. His Word always accomplishes His purpose, whether that Word opens ears or that Word closes ears; men often show the success of God’s Word as they refuse it. And that He works in ways that surprise natural men shouldn’t be surprise to spiritual men. That He stands in a position of ready grace will amaze us for ten-thousands of years. All day long He holds out His hands to the disobedient, and that is not giving the disobedient the upper hand.
Romans 9 opens the curtain to God’s eternal purpose of election; some believe and some don’t according to God’s will. Romans 10 shows what the working out of God’s will looks like on the ground, and how those who don’t believe don’t have a good excuse. God is sovereign, men are responsible. And this is especially true for the Jews. Of all peoples, Israel wasn’t ignorant, they were obstinate.
In these final verses of Romans 10 Paul shows that Israel was not ignorant of the Word, and in fact that, during this part of God’s plan, they fulfilled it by refusing it. Paul makes his point with two questions, four Old Testament quotes, and all of it is aimed to encourage us that the Word of God has not failed.
On one hand, no one calls on someone he doesn’t know. On the other hand, it’s not like they didn’t know.
But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for
“Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.”
(Romans 10:18 ESV)
Hearing requires preaching. Preaching announces the goods (Romans 10:15). And while the good news is very specific, it isn’t totally unheard of. Have they not heard? They have most definitely heard.
Paul borrows the exact words from the Greek translation of Psalm 19:4; it’s an inspired quote. Those lyrics referred to creation, in particular the heavens and the sky as “day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:2). It’s a universal language, and the voice of these figurative teachers have gone global.
Who are the they that have heard? It’s all men under the sun, in all places with a sky, in all times no matter the position of the stars. That’s the point about general revelation, and this is the point Paul picks up on in Romans 1 about the Gentiles. They know.
How does that help in the argument of Romans 10:18? Yes the “word of Christ” is special revelation, and not each and every person may have heard it yet, but there is no excuse under heaven. The gospel goes out to a global audience. Paul is not making an apostolic allegory out of Psalm 19; John Calvin observed, and dismissed, those thought to show “most piety” who interpreted the sun going forth as Christ and took the heavens as a reference to the apostles.
If the message has been heard among the Gentiles, then Israel has no excuse.
Paul explicitly calls out Israel, here and again in verse 21.
But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,
“I will make you jealous of those who are
not a nation;
with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”
(Romans 10:19 ESV)
Hearing and knowing work together. Haven’t “they” heard? Yes. Didn’t Israel in particular know? Yes. The ESV’s understand is fine, but it’s a form of the same word from Romans 10:2; Israel had a zeal for God but not according to “knowledge.” But the problem in verse 2 wasn’t that the knowledge was obscure or beyond reach, the problem is that they didn’t accept it.
In answer to whether Israel knew, First Moses means that we’ve got more than one answer coming. This first answer in verse 19 quotes from Deuteronomy 32:21. Not only did they know that righteousness comes by faith not by their own works (see Romans 10:3, 8). Israel knew 1) that the Lord’s blessings would abound beyond their borders, and 2) that they would be mad about it.
This is the first of a few strategic references to jealousy . Paired with anger it’s not positive, it’s punishment. (Fathers are commanded not to provoke their kids to anger, Ephesians 6:4). And yet there is something that was meant for the Jews that they naturally should see as theirs. We don’t know yet whether or not the bitterness would be the bitter end or if the jealousy would provoke something better (see Romans 11:11, 14).
God Himself will provoke jealousy, “ I will make jealous ,” and He do it by blessing.
If we had a map of redemption and tried to find ourselves, the label “You Are Here” sits on top of Romans 10:19. Even with the Christian principles that figured into our founding and that still have fingers in many of our common practices, from a Jew’s perspective we are a Not-Nation, another ID10T-Nation. And yet we are among those who, by receiving blessings from God not promised directly to us, are God’s tools to finish promises He did give directly to Israel. This is part of what I mean when I use the adjective jealousable. This is definitely what the phrase Kuyperian Dispensationalism tries to capture.
Here is some of that “not a nation” and “foolish nation” getting grace that grated on Israel.
Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,
“I have been found by those who did not seek me;
I have shown myself to those who did not ask
for me.”
(Romans 10:20 ESV)
This is the second answer to whether Israel knew. They were told that they would be made to look foolish and they were told that the foolish ones would be made to receive blessing.
Isaiah is bold because it this is hidden in plain sight. The quote is from Isaiah 65:1, and 65:2 is coming up in verse 21. The Israel-ism-ness, the Israel-centricity had been confronted; remember Hosea’s kids (referred to in Romans 9:25-26), “No-mercy” and “Not-my-people.” There are the natural, so to speak, and the unnatural, the expected/unexpected. These are the same ones that weren’t a nation or weren’t the right nation.
God is making sons out of pagans! He’s giving an inheritance to the prodigal son’s foreign barkeeper.
To know God, to be loved by God, to be blessed by God, these are not just better hopes for heaven realities. We have the light of the gospel now and living by faith that Jesus is Lord has spiritual and material fruit, invisible and visible results, eternal and economic impact, which enables our better grasp of success and suffering, and all that works together to make the Jews jealous.
Israel was God’s chosen nation, and they had privileges that no other people had. This was the LORDS’s doing. But they did not get it as grace to them, or expect that God would send this grace around the world.
There were seasons of revival and faithfulness to the covenant, but so much of Israel’s history was disbelief in the Word and disobedience to it. This follows with Isaiah 65:2.
But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” (Romans 10:21 ESV)
All day long emphasizes the constancy of His patience. That the Lord held out my hands is a human figure of speech for openness, receptivity; this is the only use of the word in the NT. But they were disobedient and contrary , “obstinate” (NASB). The KJV has “gainsaying,” which means saying against, so denying or contradicting, opposing.
And while this is bad, it is prophetic. They fulfilled prophecy by refusing it. All this makes us wonder if God is done with Israel, which is where Paul picks up in chapter 11: “Has God rejected His people?”
Of course we are not encouraged by the rejection of God’s Word we see around us. And, of course, we’re supposed to live by faith not by sight. Also, we should be encouraged that God not only pays better attention than us to that rejection, but that in His sovereign will He means good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose.
This is the best kind of pressure: we are to live in such a way that equips a generation to bring about the end of the age; the jealousable in Christ provoke the Jews to receive Jesus as the Messiah and the Kingdom comes. By receiving (and rejoicing in and stewarding) the blessings of God’s grace to us in Christ the Lord—blessings that we were not seeking—we are a jealousable people in His hands.
God’s Word is a training manual, it tells us what to do with our hands. Manual derives from the Latin word manus, meaning hand. What we believe comes out through our hands. The Lord gave you hands to cook and clean and show hospitality and compassion. The Lord gave you hands to type and turn pages, to write and read for His name. The Lord gave you hands with which to shake, or hug, or hold out to others. Be jealousable with your hands as instruments in the Lord’s hands.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14, ESV)