It's A Mystery
June 6, 2010 In the promise made to Abraham and brought to fruition through Moses, God established an elect nation (Deut 7). And yet as Paul makes clear in chapter 9, not all the people in the elect nation were elect individuals. Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Paul specifically points out Ishmael and Esau. Even in the OT there were elect gentiles who were grafted in to the elect people, Rahab and Ruth being the most well-known. When the Son of God came into the world he was rejected by most of the elect nation, and received only the elect within the nation. As time went by, fewer and fewer of the elect nation trusted in him, but more and more of the gentiles did. They were not a different, separate people. They were the people of God, the "natural branches" broken off for their unbelief so that the "wild branches" could be grafted in to Israel. But now Paul tells us a "mystery" - not a puzzle to be solved, but rather a revelation of something would could not otherwise know - that the hardening of the Israelites is not only partial, but it is temporary. Once the fullness of the gentiles comes in, the physical descendants of Abraham will return, and thus "all Israel will be saved" - an Israel made up of the elect and redeemed of all the nations.
Romans 11:25-36
Rev. George C. Hammond