Mysterious riddles of Jesus
“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,” “I will open My mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old.” (Matt. 13:35; Ps. 78:2).
Luke chapter 16 presents two parables, samples of the depth of Jesus’ wisdom. Both have much deeper dimensions than only a surface reading can offer. They give an inside view of the depth of His ministry and teachings, and demonstrate why the people marveled and declared things like, “Never man spake like this Man.” “How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned?” “And…the people were astonished at His doctrine.” “They were astonished, and said, Whence hath this Man this wisdom, and these mighty works?... Whence then hath this Man all these things?” (Jn. 7:46,15;Matt. 7:28:Matt. 13:54,56).
The first parable of Luke 16 begins with a rich man firing his steward. In other stories Jesus used a rich man or a king to represent His Father or Himself. I believe we should continue that pattern here in Luke chapter 16. “But,” you say, “this rich man praises his servant for frauding him! How can he represent God?” Please hear me out.
In other parables recorded by Luke we see Jesus astonish us by using unsavory characters to represent God. There is the unjust judge. (Lk. 18:2). There is the owner of an orchard anxious to pull up a non-bearing fruit tree [us!] and replace it with another. (13:6). There is the sweaty and tired master who comes in from working alongside his servant and demands to be served dinner first and afterward lets his exhausted servant eat. (17:8). Referring to the saints in the kingdom, there is the drunk who can’t immediately let go of his alcohol for more beneficial grape juice, but says instead, “Intoxication is better.” (5:39). These parables were not done in the way of “devil’s advocate” but to make use of the people’s common belief and misunderstanding of His Father, and to springboard off of their ignorance and weakness to help them understand some new, good lesson.
He makes use of all His resources, even our misunderstanding, to squeeze in a new aspect of truth. He also did this to surprise them, which kept them fully engaged and primed for a new view of grace and of His love for them.
So in the parable of the unjust steward, the rich man, his employer, commended him for adding insult to injury by giving cut-rate deals to his boss’s customers who owed debts to him, all this after having already embezzled his employer’s wealth. Then according to Luke, Jesus’ advice to the crowd (among whom many spies were listening to accuse him) was to make friends with the greedy and avaricious, those who lived only for this world, so that they would welcome the Jews in when they found themselves unemployed.
For Jesus to recommend this, it must be an obvious ruse. It was Christ who inspired the Bible writers of both Old and New Testaments. “Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 20:7). “But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” (Deut. 25:15). “Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.” (Is. 52:11). “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters… nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (1Cor. 6:9,10).
Yet His words exposed the true thinking of the wealthy religious leaders. And He was giving them fair warning that God knew their minds and was about to deal with their iniquity cloaked in flowing sanctimonious robes. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” (Rom. 1:18).
But the real thrust of this parable was on another battlefield. The end of the 490 year prophecy was quickly approaching when Israel must pass their big test. “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” (Dan. 9:24). They were found no more ready to pass this test than they had been all throughout their long inglorious history. The prophecy of Isaiah was about to be fully executed—“Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” (Is. 6:10).
This deeper view of the parable not only does no damage to the purity of God’s character, but it exalts His law because we see His final execution of His warnings against iniquity, which He had promised from the days of Moses. Rather, what Christ was doing by having the rich man praise his unrighteous servant for his wisdom, was telling the Jewish religious people that by getting off the fence, and going one way or the other, they would put themselves where God could reach them; even if they chose to run head long into hedonism and obvious devil-possession. God could more likely get through to them if they were cold rather than lukewarm.
God will force out those who are desecrating His movement of grace and true righteousness in the earth. Hypocrisy and self-sufficiency get in His way and ruin His work to save. And the Jewish religious leadership had gotten in His way. “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” (Lk.11:52). So He will vomit them out. (Lev. 18:28). All He needs to do is accept the choice of wretched sinners and give them over to the master of the lusts they love. This He delays a long, long time. But eventually He must do as the people demand of Him. So He lifts His loving protection, and Satan and his hordes move right in and immediately begin to wipe out every evidence of God’s touch.
But even then God is merciful. Before He lets the devils in He drives His people out, so that they know what decision they just made and will hopefully keep that memory tucked in the back of their mind, that it wasn’t God’s choice to let them go, it was all theirs. That memory He will touch later in their wanderings after they have had enough abuse by Satan. Some of them will respond. And, the whole time they are under the tyrannical rule of the adversary, Jesus monitors the entire sad scene, like He did His disciples battling the angry waves in the blackness. He looks for an entrance to offer them an invitation to come home. Because of love for His children and His plan to get them back to Himself, He confidently and boldly deals in strong justice.
“Make friends of the world’s wealth, that when you fail, they may receive you into perpetual habitations.” For many, completely separated from their Messiah, they would never see the light of spiritual day again. It was in the knowledge of this fact that moved Jesus to grieve in the deepest throes of weeping over Jerusalem as He entered it on the way to the cross. “His eyes fill with tears, and His body rock to and fro like a tree before the tempest, while a wail of anguish bursts from His quivering lips, as if from the depths of a broken heart.” DA 575. He hates to let go; but there comes a point when He must. When there is no more love in the hearts of those He loves, then He abruptly ends the relationship. All they needed to do was love Him and He would have worked overtime to fix up their broken lives. But they didn’t want to love Him or the better life He offered.
The next parable of Luke 16 immediately follows the first because it also deals with the same issue as the first parable. A deeper look reveals the same warning to the Jews. However, because of the inability to understand the dark sayings of the Lord, many among the modern-day churches have used this parable to assist Satan in propagating his gospel of spiritualism. This was certainly not Christ’s intention. It was the Testimony of Jesus, the spirit of prophecy, that spoke through David and Solomon when they wrote, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. For his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. ” “The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing … also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.” (Ps. 146:3,4;Eccl. 9:5).
But again, Jesus was simply using the people’s ignorance of truth to make His point. Greek and Egyptian pagan influences had made deep inroads into Jewish thought, and Jesus used this to His advantage to teach a lesson in another field. The rabbis and priest should have caught the deeper message of warning aimed at them since the examples used in the parable were obvious contradictions to sound scriptural doctrine of the dead, but in keeping with other riddles and prophetic stories of their ancient scriptures.
One phrase of this second story depicts the fearful result of the judgment that was about to befall the Jews. “And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” (vs. 26). A permanent separation from God was about to be realized by the Jewish people and leadership—the great gulf they had asked for, and which the Lord in His mercy had withheld it far longer than they deserved. Once they finally denied their Messiah, He would deny His protection from satanic forces, and they would be left wide open to the delusions of His adversary.
For 1500 years the threats of His departure from them had gone unheeded, “The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee…. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.” (Deut. 28:28,29,65). “And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” (Is. 8:22).
Then came the well known prophecy of the Messiah which was preceded with a solemn message of a probationary period for Israel. “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” (Dan. 9:24). The word used for “determined upon [thy people]” had the double meaning of “cut off [thy people].” In other words, a cutting off of the Jews was to be anticipated if they failed to come to God with all their heart and soul and obedience of love. This warning was so well understood by the rabbis and religious leaders that they forbade any attempts by the Jews to interpret this prophecy, and they laid a curse on anyone who tried.
“Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” (Lk. 16:29). The answer from the parable’s Abraham to the pleading, suffering rich man weren’t very pitiful or merciful. They were words of pure justice. They were sentiments not of Abraham, but actually of Christ who was ventriloquizing through father of the faithful. It came from Jesus, who was full of truth and grace mixed.
In the final words, “And he [Abraham] said unto him [the rich man], If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Lk. 16:31). “They hear not Moses and the prophets” and “neither will they be persuaded”—these words indicate Christ’s judgment sentence passed upon them in their own hearing. Even Jesus’ resurrection wouldn’t change their final choice. They were found calling Him “the deceiver” at His burial, and bribing the contingent of soldiers who had fallen unconscious at the angel’s opening of Joseph’s tomb.
But even Jesus’ warning in the parable was a message of His love. Stern rebuke was the final last resort. And He would not fail to use it for their salvation’s sake. As a result, later, their spirits humbled by the grace they saw in the crucifixion, “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7).
God cut off the nation of Israel. He converted Saul and made him a powerhouse to face the angry and murderous attempts by the Sanhedrin to restore themselves to God’s object of supreme regard. Now the Jews must enter into the kingdom as foreigners and vagabonds, individually leaving the comfort and protection of their families and official religion, and bravely, humbly following the same voice that Abraham heeded when he left his human connections and earthly possessions to find the unknown God who satisfied his heart.
“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 fulness 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:
For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes.
For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.” (Rom. 11:25-32).
So we see the full circle of God’s justice and mercy toward the world of sinners. Some of the Jews (vs. 14) and some of the Gentiles, those who would bow down and break under the heavy hand of the Lord’s mercy and justice, would make up the “remnant,” the “election,” “all Israel.” Surely, the end of the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy, as we see how much God so loved the world.
And the rest who would not fall and be broken were damned to blindness and cut off. “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” (Heb. 4:1).
“Be not highminded, but fear:
For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee.
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.
And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.” (Rom. 11:20-23).
The warning and promise to ancient Israel and anyone else who desired to join them, which the Lord fulfilled in them and also in the Gentiles, all of whom, the world round, whose parents had departed from the truth since the days of Noah.
“And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.” (Deut. 28:36-42).
Luke chapter 16 presents two parables, samples of the depth of Jesus’ wisdom. Both have much deeper dimensions than only a surface reading can offer. They give an inside view of the depth of His ministry and teachings, and demonstrate why the people marveled and declared things like, “Never man spake like this Man.” “How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned?” “And…the people were astonished at His doctrine.” “They were astonished, and said, Whence hath this Man this wisdom, and these mighty works?... Whence then hath this Man all these things?” (Jn. 7:46,15;Matt. 7:28:Matt. 13:54,56).
The first parable of Luke 16 begins with a rich man firing his steward. In other stories Jesus used a rich man or a king to represent His Father or Himself. I believe we should continue that pattern here in Luke chapter 16. “But,” you say, “this rich man praises his servant for frauding him! How can he represent God?” Please hear me out.
In other parables recorded by Luke we see Jesus astonish us by using unsavory characters to represent God. There is the unjust judge. (Lk. 18:2). There is the owner of an orchard anxious to pull up a non-bearing fruit tree [us!] and replace it with another. (13:6). There is the sweaty and tired master who comes in from working alongside his servant and demands to be served dinner first and afterward lets his exhausted servant eat. (17:8). Referring to the saints in the kingdom, there is the drunk who can’t immediately let go of his alcohol for more beneficial grape juice, but says instead, “Intoxication is better.” (5:39). These parables were not done in the way of “devil’s advocate” but to make use of the people’s common belief and misunderstanding of His Father, and to springboard off of their ignorance and weakness to help them understand some new, good lesson.
He makes use of all His resources, even our misunderstanding, to squeeze in a new aspect of truth. He also did this to surprise them, which kept them fully engaged and primed for a new view of grace and of His love for them.
So in the parable of the unjust steward, the rich man, his employer, commended him for adding insult to injury by giving cut-rate deals to his boss’s customers who owed debts to him, all this after having already embezzled his employer’s wealth. Then according to Luke, Jesus’ advice to the crowd (among whom many spies were listening to accuse him) was to make friends with the greedy and avaricious, those who lived only for this world, so that they would welcome the Jews in when they found themselves unemployed.
For Jesus to recommend this, it must be an obvious ruse. It was Christ who inspired the Bible writers of both Old and New Testaments. “Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 20:7). “But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” (Deut. 25:15). “Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.” (Is. 52:11). “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters… nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (1Cor. 6:9,10).
Yet His words exposed the true thinking of the wealthy religious leaders. And He was giving them fair warning that God knew their minds and was about to deal with their iniquity cloaked in flowing sanctimonious robes. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” (Rom. 1:18).
But the real thrust of this parable was on another battlefield. The end of the 490 year prophecy was quickly approaching when Israel must pass their big test. “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” (Dan. 9:24). They were found no more ready to pass this test than they had been all throughout their long inglorious history. The prophecy of Isaiah was about to be fully executed—“Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” (Is. 6:10).
This deeper view of the parable not only does no damage to the purity of God’s character, but it exalts His law because we see His final execution of His warnings against iniquity, which He had promised from the days of Moses. Rather, what Christ was doing by having the rich man praise his unrighteous servant for his wisdom, was telling the Jewish religious people that by getting off the fence, and going one way or the other, they would put themselves where God could reach them; even if they chose to run head long into hedonism and obvious devil-possession. God could more likely get through to them if they were cold rather than lukewarm.
God will force out those who are desecrating His movement of grace and true righteousness in the earth. Hypocrisy and self-sufficiency get in His way and ruin His work to save. And the Jewish religious leadership had gotten in His way. “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” (Lk.11:52). So He will vomit them out. (Lev. 18:28). All He needs to do is accept the choice of wretched sinners and give them over to the master of the lusts they love. This He delays a long, long time. But eventually He must do as the people demand of Him. So He lifts His loving protection, and Satan and his hordes move right in and immediately begin to wipe out every evidence of God’s touch.
But even then God is merciful. Before He lets the devils in He drives His people out, so that they know what decision they just made and will hopefully keep that memory tucked in the back of their mind, that it wasn’t God’s choice to let them go, it was all theirs. That memory He will touch later in their wanderings after they have had enough abuse by Satan. Some of them will respond. And, the whole time they are under the tyrannical rule of the adversary, Jesus monitors the entire sad scene, like He did His disciples battling the angry waves in the blackness. He looks for an entrance to offer them an invitation to come home. Because of love for His children and His plan to get them back to Himself, He confidently and boldly deals in strong justice.
“Make friends of the world’s wealth, that when you fail, they may receive you into perpetual habitations.” For many, completely separated from their Messiah, they would never see the light of spiritual day again. It was in the knowledge of this fact that moved Jesus to grieve in the deepest throes of weeping over Jerusalem as He entered it on the way to the cross. “His eyes fill with tears, and His body rock to and fro like a tree before the tempest, while a wail of anguish bursts from His quivering lips, as if from the depths of a broken heart.” DA 575. He hates to let go; but there comes a point when He must. When there is no more love in the hearts of those He loves, then He abruptly ends the relationship. All they needed to do was love Him and He would have worked overtime to fix up their broken lives. But they didn’t want to love Him or the better life He offered.
The next parable of Luke 16 immediately follows the first because it also deals with the same issue as the first parable. A deeper look reveals the same warning to the Jews. However, because of the inability to understand the dark sayings of the Lord, many among the modern-day churches have used this parable to assist Satan in propagating his gospel of spiritualism. This was certainly not Christ’s intention. It was the Testimony of Jesus, the spirit of prophecy, that spoke through David and Solomon when they wrote, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. For his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. ” “The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing … also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.” (Ps. 146:3,4;Eccl. 9:5).
But again, Jesus was simply using the people’s ignorance of truth to make His point. Greek and Egyptian pagan influences had made deep inroads into Jewish thought, and Jesus used this to His advantage to teach a lesson in another field. The rabbis and priest should have caught the deeper message of warning aimed at them since the examples used in the parable were obvious contradictions to sound scriptural doctrine of the dead, but in keeping with other riddles and prophetic stories of their ancient scriptures.
One phrase of this second story depicts the fearful result of the judgment that was about to befall the Jews. “And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” (vs. 26). A permanent separation from God was about to be realized by the Jewish people and leadership—the great gulf they had asked for, and which the Lord in His mercy had withheld it far longer than they deserved. Once they finally denied their Messiah, He would deny His protection from satanic forces, and they would be left wide open to the delusions of His adversary.
For 1500 years the threats of His departure from them had gone unheeded, “The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee…. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.” (Deut. 28:28,29,65). “And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” (Is. 8:22).
Then came the well known prophecy of the Messiah which was preceded with a solemn message of a probationary period for Israel. “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” (Dan. 9:24). The word used for “determined upon [thy people]” had the double meaning of “cut off [thy people].” In other words, a cutting off of the Jews was to be anticipated if they failed to come to God with all their heart and soul and obedience of love. This warning was so well understood by the rabbis and religious leaders that they forbade any attempts by the Jews to interpret this prophecy, and they laid a curse on anyone who tried.
“Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” (Lk. 16:29). The answer from the parable’s Abraham to the pleading, suffering rich man weren’t very pitiful or merciful. They were words of pure justice. They were sentiments not of Abraham, but actually of Christ who was ventriloquizing through father of the faithful. It came from Jesus, who was full of truth and grace mixed.
In the final words, “And he [Abraham] said unto him [the rich man], If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Lk. 16:31). “They hear not Moses and the prophets” and “neither will they be persuaded”—these words indicate Christ’s judgment sentence passed upon them in their own hearing. Even Jesus’ resurrection wouldn’t change their final choice. They were found calling Him “the deceiver” at His burial, and bribing the contingent of soldiers who had fallen unconscious at the angel’s opening of Joseph’s tomb.
But even Jesus’ warning in the parable was a message of His love. Stern rebuke was the final last resort. And He would not fail to use it for their salvation’s sake. As a result, later, their spirits humbled by the grace they saw in the crucifixion, “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7).
God cut off the nation of Israel. He converted Saul and made him a powerhouse to face the angry and murderous attempts by the Sanhedrin to restore themselves to God’s object of supreme regard. Now the Jews must enter into the kingdom as foreigners and vagabonds, individually leaving the comfort and protection of their families and official religion, and bravely, humbly following the same voice that Abraham heeded when he left his human connections and earthly possessions to find the unknown God who satisfied his heart.
“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 fulness 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:
For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes.
For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.” (Rom. 11:25-32).
So we see the full circle of God’s justice and mercy toward the world of sinners. Some of the Jews (vs. 14) and some of the Gentiles, those who would bow down and break under the heavy hand of the Lord’s mercy and justice, would make up the “remnant,” the “election,” “all Israel.” Surely, the end of the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy, as we see how much God so loved the world.
And the rest who would not fall and be broken were damned to blindness and cut off. “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” (Heb. 4:1).
“Be not highminded, but fear:
For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee.
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.
And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.” (Rom. 11:20-23).
The warning and promise to ancient Israel and anyone else who desired to join them, which the Lord fulfilled in them and also in the Gentiles, all of whom, the world round, whose parents had departed from the truth since the days of Noah.
“And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.” (Deut. 28:36-42).
posted by David | 5:57 AM
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