1: I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2: God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, 3: Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. 4: But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. 5: Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. 6: And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. 7: What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded 8: (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. 9: And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompence unto them: 10: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back always. 11: 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. 12: Now 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 fullness? 13: For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: 14: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. 15: For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? 16: For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. 17: And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; 18: Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. 19: Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. 20: Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: 21: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. 22: Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. 23: And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again. 24: For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? 25: For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. 26: And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: 27: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. 28: As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. 29: For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. 30: For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: 31: Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. 32: For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. 33: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! 34: For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counseller? 35: Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? 36: For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

All Israel to be saved. It then would be wise to concentrate our attention to this particular passage, because it may help us in regard to the rest. So in chapter 11, where it speaks about all Israel, it says in verse 26 And so all Israel shall be saved:...  And you can lift that verse out and you can prove by that statement that every single Israelite that has ever been born must be saved. Well you say, it says so. Say look my friend, no one verse in the scripture is an isolated verse. It only has a teaching when it is in its context. You can make any verse prove almost any thing by ignoring its context. Well you say, what context is there here? Well that means to say that you think the context is the next verse. But the context maybe the next chapter. Now supposing, I am only asking this, supposing in chapter 9 the Apostle has gone out of his way to discuss who he means by Israel, and you never bothered to read it. Well you would be perfectly certain that your right, won't you. And you may be very wrong. So let us, with a humble mind, let the LORD tell us what He means when He says all Israel. shall we. And we go back to chapter 9. verse 6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:... Now what does that mean? Well perhaps we better see, because he is going to go on and explain further. Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children...  How many children did  Abraham had? What are the names of these families? You know he had a child called Ishmael. You know he had a child called Isaac. But I've got a list here, Ishmael, Isaac, Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. {1ch 1:32} They are all the seed of Abraham. But they are not all Israel are they? But you see, we have to come to Isaac before we get to Israel. And that is the essence of this. Ishmael was never in Isaac. Midian was never in Isaac. So, the child of promise, that came as near to the possibility of miraculous birth in the old testament was Isaac. He was the one.

Lets pick it up again then verse 7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.... So God has a seed. And the seed is practically the answer to the question. The first statement about two seeds in the bible is in Genesis 3. That is early enough isn't it. And God is speaking to the serpent and to Eve in the enclosed garden. And He said verse 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;... If that doesn't mean two seeds then words have no meaning. We are faced immediately with a seed that was being attacked, as it goes on to say concerning Christ in the yet future, it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. ... So you see, Abraham could have descendants. Physical descendants who were not children of promise. Lets speak again, does our Savior move a veil a little bit of this gigantic problem. So far as the teaching is concerned and the kingdom is concerned. He told His disciples the reason why He was being rejected and the kingdom was not about to be set up, He said an enemy is at work. An enemy has done this. And the parable is that a man sowed good seed in his field but an enemy came and sowed in that very self same field tares or a false sort of wheat, not tares. But it doesn't matter for the moment. Now are we going to except that as a picture of nothing at all or a picture of truth. Because He goes on to say, it shall be at the end of the age the angels shall separate the one from the other, and ones for the barn and the others for the burning. Surely there is a distinction there. And is there any hint in scripture that by any miracle of grace tares will be ultimately be transformed in to wheat. Never. We get the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But they were sheep even though they were lost. But we get some that were said to be like the sow that were washed, and the sow that was washed was never turned in to a sheep. It was a sow still. There are two seeds in the bible.

Now then, he said you should be careful. Abraham had many descendants. But only in Isaac does this calling operate. We are not dealing with our calling. You see, we needn't have a protest meeting about it. It doesn't belong to us. It belongs to Israel. True Israel, only are found in Isaac. And so we come to the next part of the argument in this chapter. In Isaac shall thy seed be called.8: That is, ... Now when the inspired writer says "that is" he's going on to explain isn't he. That is, I will tell you more. They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: It stops us from saying that every single individual descendant of Abraham must be a part of the chosen nation. For God says, NO, no, I am telling you what I mean by it. So lets read further. verse 8 {continued} but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Now God is the only one who can make promises. And when God makes a promise He doesn't make a vague promise to no body. He makes a promise to some body. And those are counted for the seed. verse 9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. 10: And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;... Now it puts in brackets we might say couldn't be verse 11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) 12: It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.... Then it goes on and aggravates the case a little bit more by Pharaoh. Was Pharaoh one of those who were called? Well it doesn't seem to be so here, because he says, God raised him up verse 17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. 18: Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.... That is a desperate passage to read, isn't it. Will the temptations try to soften it. It states here that God is sovereign over this. And we do well to have it brought before us, atleast once. We don't want to over do it because that will be just as evil.

And so, he puts in to scripture what is in our minds. verse 19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? 20: Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? ... He does not stoop to explain! So we come now back to chapter 11 and we say, I know who Israel are now. It's not every single individual descendant according to the flesh. It is the children of promise who are said to be in Isaac. And none of us know how we are going to differentiate it. Then, we are not going to do the calling, God does. So, you see the value of having a whole passage in front of you. He says I will tell you what all Israel means in chapter 9. If you take that with you, and say every one of the children of promise must eventually be saved. But now you see, for the moment, chapter 11 [[[verse 28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes:  They are enemies for you sakes. but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.29: For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. There is no possibility of any rift or any thing failing in God's original purpose. He put man in the earth, and in that man there was a seed. And the first great thing that satan did was to attack that seed. So that Cain was born and the new testament says, he was of that wicked one. So we have to be very watchful that we don't minimize the attack of the enemy. And the awful mixture that he brings about to spoil, if he can, the purpose of God.

Now for the rest of this part of the study I would like to deal with a word or two with regard to another aspect that is often used, which is a figure of speech that comes in this chapter, about the Olive tree. I have read that the Apostle Paul, of course you couldn't expect him to know every thing, he certainly didn't know much about gardening. Well its very probable that the Apostle Paul never dug a trench in his life. And he never pruned a tree in his life. According to what we know of his up bringing, he had no need. I think he was of a good family and in the ordinary way would have had servants to wait upon him. But, this man is writing by inspiration of God. And on top of that he was a man of no uncommon understanding and intellect. Of course the objection is that this is all back to front. Who have heard of any one grafting a wild stock in to a choice one? It's the other way around. If you have an apple tree in your garden, if you have say Cox's orange pippin, well that's grafted on to a wild stock. So that it gets all the vigor of the wild stock but all the fruit of the choice one. If you have a nice rose in your garden, well its on a briar stock. But this is all back to front. So shall we apologize and say, oh dear friends we don't expect the bible to be true with regard to a little details like that. It's good enough. It isn't good enough is it. Now there was a writer in A.D. 40. That is the time of Claudius and the Apostle Paul. There was a writer who wrote on Horticulture, and his name was Colin Neller, and he said that an Olive tree grows, grows until at last it ceases to bear. Now I have seen some olive trees, and they look like they were a thousand years of age, and they might have been, and they look like old men, giggles, like they were just struck dumb, so ancient. But he says, instead of cutting them down you can do this to an Olive tree. You can take a wild olive and graft in to that tree, not that the wild olive is going to produce any fruit, but it provokes to emulation the dying tree and up it wakes again and gives up more fruit. And that is being done in our own day.

When you take horticulture in college and they do experiments. One such experiment they couldn't quite understand just why something happened. They had a row of pears in the nursery that grew quite healthily. Brought forth plenty of blossom. But no fruit. Then one of those happy accidents happened. That one of the work people engaged in that garden went and grafted in to the pear tree one of these vigorous stock that should not have been done. And to their surprise the pear tree bore fruit. And if you were there you could stand up and say, if you knew the teaching of the epistle to the Romans chapter 11 you would have had your answer. Ohhhh, wants to go to Romans 11. But there it is. That little bit vigorous grafted in to that tree woke it up. And he says to provoke to emulation them that are my flesh. Why were the gentiles given all those spiritual gifts. He says, with stammering lips and with other tongues will I provoke you to jealousy. He says your losing all your essential qualities. The Gentiles are getting them. Then instead of them being provoked some thing must have gone wrong for they said we won't repent. They were hardened in their unbelief. And so it says, in this chapter 11, their eyes are darkened and bow down their back always. verse 11 I say then, Have they stumbled. Now have they stumbled with the object they should fall. Ohhh no, no, no, God Forbid. God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles,... What for? Here is a point for you to remember. It was not the essential time of Gentile blessing. No, No. Romans says the Jew first. Romans says that Israel is the Olive tree. But why were the Gentiles save at all? Its rather humbling for us to read, isn't it.  for to provoke them to jealousy.... The salvation of the Gentile was hastened and brought forward if it were possible to make Israel to see what they were loosing. Just as the grafting in the Olive was.

So, the true Gentile calling does not come till Israel is gone, and you and I enter in to the epistle to the Ephesians. That is where we really come in to our own. There is no Jew there at all then, to be dealt with, because he is blind, temporarily. One day he will have his eyes opened again. So he says, instead of critizing God for all this, you think of the wonder of His over ruling. verse 12 Now 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 fullness? ... What will it be! When all Israel will be saved. What will it be when they look upon Him that they pierced. What will it be when a nation will be born in a day and they become as God had intended they become, that kingdom of priest in the earth to which all the nations of the earth should attend and be saved and be brought to the knowledge of the truth. If we'd only let God work out His purposes with out explaining every thing to us and leave some of it to His grace, and to His love, and to His kindness, to His goodness, to His righteousness, to His holiness, and even to His judgment. And say we've got much as ever we could do in this present little life we have to attain on to some understanding of why we were saved. And what we were saved to. So again I say to you in the heading of this study do ye see your calling brethren? WE have come in to blessing, who belong to the church of the one body, during a time when the people of Israel are in there blindness, because he says it and mentions it. verse 25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery,... You know there is a number of passages where Paul prefaces a statement with that. I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant. And if you look at them you would see that is just where the folks are ignorant. Including even you and me. And so he says, if you are ignorant of this you will get rather tangled and mixed up. lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness... Partial blindness because the Apostle says, I am a Jew, but I am saved. Oh yes. Partial blindness, that has happened to Israel  until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.... And that is getting very, very near, possibly. For as you can see, the southern Leg of the Roman Empire, which is Babylon, giggles, is waking up. The Anti-Christian religion is growing in power. Iraq, and around about are sure growing. Over nineteen hundred years now, since Israel was set aside, and one day, the silence will be broken, the scales fall from their eyes, they will repeat the road to Damascus. They will fall down and say, who art thou Lord? And they will stand up again like Saul of Tarsus, converted and cleansed, and commissioned. Until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: 

Well, I face this question, should I include such a controversial set of statements in to this study.? Well, that would be very dishonest, wouldn't it. I am not typing this out to please any body. I'm not typing to soften down the teaching of scripture. All we can do is to point to what the word says. And I do trust that you will take your right place in the presence of the living God. And remember in all His graciousness, in all His mercy, in all His love, He is still God. And He says to every one of us, whether you are members of the body or what ever you may be, who art thou that repliest against God. Wouldn't be wise for us to leave some of these great questions that are not canvassed in scripture to Him. Shall we not stand up with Abraham at long last and say, shall not the judge of all the earth do right. And does He got to explain every thing before I trust Him. If He does, that is not faith. Faith is saying, I don't understand, I can't see the path, but what I do know of My God enables me to venture where I can not see, and can not hear, and can not feel. So don't expect that the bible has been written to satisfy every question. It has been given so that we will exercise faith in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And where we can not trace Him, He still expects us to trust Him. And that is the character of ALL callings. Whether it be Israel, or the church, or any other company. Just in passing before this chapter ends. About these seeds, whether some will be forever excluded. Don't forget in the history of the bible we are told that certain Canaanites, which were all devoted to destruction, dressed them selves up in old clothes and had moldy bread. And by a little subterfuge they got excepted by Joshua. Well, then when he found out what they did, he was going to terminate them, but God says no. But they are not sons. They are not children. They are hewers of wood and drawers of water. There is a possibility that not one of the evil seeds will ever be refused of God if, but you read the book of the Revelation, with all the judgments that fell, they repented not and they simple reviled God. Until there was no remedy.

Chapter 4. Callings.