You and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You can hear me. I don't think you can see me yet, but sorry about that. We had some technical difficulties going on. Here I am now. You can hear me. You can see me. Maybe we're even broadcasting just happened that after the lovely elevator music, the internet said goodbye, but it's back. Sorry about that delay. Here we are, session number 23 in Romans, rightly divided. We've got an outline available for you and we will look at that here in just a moment. Or begin looking at that. You can take and either use that as a listener guide tonight, or you can take it and use it later and we'll be ready to go and ready to do all that. So again, with no further ado, let's move right over here and get started. Maybe I don't think that works there. Did it? Nathan will get that set. Nathan will get that set. There we go. He's coming on it. But as soon as we get over here do you need me to switch back to the other camera, Nathan? No. There we go. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here again after numerous technical difficulties. I think I got my tie floating around here. There we go. Are we ready now? Can you hear me? I'm good to go. You like my paisley silver tie? This is Paisley week at Randy White Ministries. Got the silver look today. Hey, Mark. The Gospel of Mark. We started it last night. Mark, we had one session. If you missed that, you can catch that online. Would love for you to join us there. But tonight we're all about Romans, rightly divided verse by verse. And here we come into the 9th chapter. We are going to make some progress here tonight. We have been for a long time looking at some issues of chapters five through eight, but here we go tonight. And I just noticed Nathan, maybe that'll go back well. Okay, we'll get to that in a moment. Internet outage. Messed up my screen there. I want to remind you where we are. The 30,000 foot view of Romans. That is page five. I didn't put that in your book, but page five of Romans graphically presented the big view from the way up high. We had the case stated in chapters one through five. And then in 512 through 839, we had the case testified. The case is, I got something new to tell you. And then it was testified saying, hey, there's some validity to what is going on here. You should stop and you should check this out. And so we saw the giving testimony to the validity of the mystery. Now we come tonight to a new section. And that new section is Romans, chapter nine through eleven, 910 and eleven. And that is God's work through Israel fulfilled. We're actually going to go back. Paul has introduced the mystery and now he asks the question well, what about Israel? Where does the mystery leave Israel? And he's going to speak about it in chapters nine through eleven and already introduced it really even in chapter eight. Now, Romans nine one through eleven six. This is page 39, I believe. Yeah, no, it's page 38. 38 of Romans graphically presented shows the entire section, nine one through 1136, and that should be 1136, nine one through 1136. We are going to break into two sections. God's work through Israel fulfilled Romans nine and ten, paul's prayer and God's plan for Israel in the dispensational change and beyond. That's what we're going to be talking about here for the next few weeks. That is, what does Paul pray and what is God's plan for Israel in this dispensational change? That is to say, here you've got again the Kingdom Gospel that has been all along, and now you bring in the Grace gospel. You got a little period of overlap, but what is God going to do with Israel? Is it cut off so as to never be used again? Is God abandoned Israel? He's going to address that issue, which is, I think you would agree with me, a pretty major issue. And then page 39 of Romans graphically presented is specifically where we will be tonight in Romans chapter nine, verses one through five, which is Paul's prayer for Israel. And we'll look at this in verses one and two. To miss this is to never know Paul. That'll be important. If you want to know Paul, you got to know chapter nine, verses one through two. If you give a book about Paul, for example, nt right, who is vo wrong, very often wrote a book about Paul, the new perspective of Paul, and he doesn't ever mention chapter nine, verses one through two. And Paul's passion for Israel. You got to know his passion for Israel if you're going to know Paul and we're Pauline people, so we should know it then. Verses in the middle of verse two down to verse five. These verses should be used as a hermeneutical rule. If it belongs to Israel, the church shouldn't take it. So this is a huge right dividing lesson that we've got tonight. Now, let's get over here. And again, pardon the fact that reset just a little bit. I'm going to get things where they should be and we will be ready to go. So we've got the Young's Literal translation over here, and we've got axe and we've got excuse me, we, we do have axe right there, but we're about not to. We've got all linked up and we're going to Romans, chapter nine, verse one. Here we go. There, I'm all set again. Young's Literal, Greek, Interlinear, King James, all of these are in our own, my own acts. Excuse me, right dividing, color coding. All these verses tonight are black. That means I do not believe they are for us, for obvious reasons. Sometimes I have to defend my position. Sometimes I waffle on my position. I think here today, we'll all agree. Now, that's not for us. So Paul comes along and he says, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. Shall we stop right there? I say, the truth, in Christ, I lie not. How many of you suspect Paul to be a liar? Most of the time he's lying, right? No, you and I do come from time to time and say, well, to tell you the truth, or let me tell you the truth, and we've been telling the truth the whole time. This is not a new thing for us to tell the truth. Paul comes and Paul carries this out a number of times where he says something like, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. I take it as an emphasis, like when you and I say, hey, let me tell you the truth. It is a little bit of a he's saying, listen here, I got some truth to tell you. We're going to have some truth telling. Now, there's a little bit of that in it, but probably also, if we were to investigate the times he said it and the subject matter when he says it, I think that Paul, if we put let's let's put the writing of the Book of Romans at about 58 Ad. And then let's put the giving of the mystery, maybe 48, probably at the earliest, maybe even 49, 50, right in that area there, the late 40s, maybe even the early 50s, if we were to push it a little bit. So basically what you've got is less than ten years of the mystery, and there was a lot of controversy about the mystery, including the Jerusalem Conference and several things that happened. So I think that certainly early on and even later, there were a lot of people saying, yeah, the guy claims to have heard a mystery. He's just a mystic, which is another word for kook. He's a kook. Paul's a kook. Well, he comes along here on a number of occasions, and he says phrases like this, hey, look, I'm telling you the truth. I am not lying. I think that when you and I read it, first of all, we ought to say, okay, I want to get a little of the cultural context here. Why in the world would he tell us he's not lying? What's up with that? And to understand that Pauline theology was controversial from the day it came out, it was controversial. There's never been a time when Pauline theology was not controversial. It's controversial to this day. And you go out and teach Pauline theology, a lot of people are just going to write you off. They might even call you a heretic, whatever. Many people will be like, well, he holds some weird ideas. I don't get it. I don't know it. But all things work together for good to those who love God and called according to his purpose, God bless him. So they'll either ignore you or they'll write you off many, many times. Pauline theology is controversial. It was controversial in Paul's day. Remember he said, all in Asia left me. They've all departed. And Paul was almost a walking controversy, a bundle of controversy, because he really was bringing something brand new. I think those who reject the Pauline mystery and reject dispensationalism and especially right dividing kind of dispensationalism, I think they have really no clue why Paul was so controversial. They just think, I guess he just had such a vibrant personality that he offended a lot of people wherever he went. It had nothing to do with his personality. I think he was actually probably a pretty nice guy. I hope when I meet him someday, he and I are good friends and he might look and say, hey, nice haircut. I like that. You and I look the same, whatever it is. I don't think it was his personality that caused him controversy. It was his theology that caused him controversy. And those again who reject right division have to go to his personality or his he was just cantankerous because non right dividers. Paul teaches the same thing as Peter taught, as James taught, as John taught all through. And it's just that John was a nice guy, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Well, Peter, he did get killed, too, because he's kind of boisterous. And Paul, man, he just was picking a fight every day he got up. That was his personality, which is kind of what word do I want here? Kind of rude towards Paul. God chose the Apostle Paul, who had one of the worst behavioral characteristics there was, couldn't get along with anybody taught the same message. If God's going to just deliver the same message, why not get someone winsome, whatever that word means, right? Get somebody winsome and cheerful. Get like Dale Carnegie or something like that. And Paul was no Dale Carnegie, but it's the content of his message. So Paul in that I'll say cultural miloo, because we'll sound real smart if we do. So in that cultural miloo. Paul was a controversial figure, and so he had to come from time to time and say, I tell you the truth, in Christ I lie not. I've given you a couple other examples. There Galatians, chapter one, verse 21, timothy, chapter two, verse seven, in which he said the the same thing, you know, I write the truth, I lie not. I'm ordained as a preacher of the Apostle, I speak the truth in Christ I lie not, he says. And even first Peter chapter excuse me, first Timothy, chapter one, verse 15, where he doesn't use the words, I'm not a liar. For some reason, I think of Richard Nixon. I'm not a crook. So Paul had to come and testify. I'm not a crook, I'm not a liar. I testify to you even in one, timothy, chapter one, verse 15. Again he says, hey, this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation. He many times has to lay the groundwork. There's controversy about his apostleship. A lot of people don't even believe that Paul's an apostle, or they don't believe that he's got a message from God. They think he's made it all up. So here, whenever we see these almost begging to listen to me, hey, give me a minute, I think we ought to listen to the guy. I think we ought to come and see what it is that he has to say. So here Paul comes. Not only does he say, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, but he goes on to say, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. Now, that is, I don't know if this is the best way to put this, but I guess if we were in the fifth grade and wanted to put this in a fifth grade translation, we would say, I'm not lying, I'm telling the truth. Cross my fingers, hope to die. That's the epitome of a promise, right? We should make presidents do that when they take the oath of office. Cross my fingers, hope to die, that my conscience is bearing witness in me. He's saying, hey, I have taken inventory of my mind, of my heart, of my soul. This is absolutely the truth. There is no shade of deception here at all. I am not speaking hyperbole. I want you to get it. And the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, is working his conscience. He's opened up his conscience to the Holy Ghost and said, okay, am I lying here, Holy Ghost? And the Holy Ghost says no, you're not lying. And he goes out and says, I'm not lying in my conscience, with the Holy Ghost guiding that. Now, here's what he then begins to say in verse two, he says that I have a great Heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Now, he's going to tell us what it's about in a moment, and I'll go ahead and let you know. It's Israel and Israel's current state. But this is where I said a moment ago, if you want to be Pauline and understand Paul, paul's writings, you have to understand that he had a great heaviness, a continual sorrow in his heart, and it was for Israel. I think there are well, let me start back in that day. Here's the Roman Jews, and they come and hear Paul say, hey, guess what? God's doing this new thing now in which you're saved outside of the law. You're saved by grace through faith, not of your works. And we conclude therefore, that a man is justified by faith. That he says earlier in the book of Romans. And then the Jews, of course, said, well, if you don't need the Jewish law, where does that leave us? And you're the guy delivering this message. You must hate Israel. You must be telling us that God has turned his back on Israel, and so have you. And that's why I think Paul, even from the beginning, has to come and say, hey, I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. Now, go back 20 sessions ago or so, and we talked about how I believe that Romans 116 is talking about the kingdom Gospel for Israel. Paul's not ashamed of that. He will proclaim. That why? Because he has this great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart that is Paul. So when you hear, and I hear right dividers sometimes say things like, paul is the ambassador to the Gentiles, the apostle to the Gentiles, and as soon as he got his message, he didn't break the prohibition to go not to go to the Gentiles. They overspeak that statement. By the way, paul was never prohibited from going to the Jews. I should have said, but a lot of right dividers say, no, Paul, absolutely don't ever talk to a Jew again unless you tell him the Gospel of grace. Don't give any of that kingdom stuff. That's not Jerus. Paul. Paul says, I have a great heaviness and a continual sorrow in my heart. Paul is the guy that wants maybe more than anybody. Paul is the guy that wants Israel to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and to repent and to be baptized to do that Peter stuff. Paul wants Israel to do that. That is so Pauline, I suspect that you can't get this is kind of a weird statement, but I suspect you can't get anyone more Jewish than Paul. Paul, he kind of himself in Philippians, doesn't he? I think it's Philippians. Claims to be the Jews. Jew? You want the icon of Judaism. Paul says, here I am. I won Jew of the Year award. This is Paul, so you can't expect him, nor should we expect him, and nor do we find any evidence that when he received the Gospel to the Gentiles or the Gospel to the individuals, that he turned his back on Israel and abandoned Israel. He is so passionate that Israel, maybe even in his lifetime, would receive her Messiah and her King. So this is so very pauline, it was Philippians, chapter three, verses four through six, where Paul talks about, on the 8th day I was circumcised. I exceeded the Judaism of everyone else. In Galatians, chapter one, verses 13 through 14, he says, I'm a Jew by nature. In Galatians, chapter two, he introduces himself as a Jew from Tarsus in Acts chapter 21. So he is just this Jews jew. And so it hurts him to think, hey, Israel is going to diminish. This is not what he wants. And therefore it's not surprising to us when we see Paul go to thessalonic and he goes first to the synagogue or corinth he goes first to the synagogue with Timothy's, like, hey, I want you to be circumcised. I was circumcised on the 8th day. And all of the Judaism that he does, he says, hey, I got a vow to fill, he's a Jew. And we have to recognize Pauline theology through the lens of his passion for Judaism. Otherwise I think we can write this off too much, we can write out the Judaism, and I think those of us who are right dividers sometimes do this. We just are quick to say, well, Romans through philemon, that's Pauline, that's ours, that's all Gentile stuff. Now, Romans through philemon is not all Gentile stuff. There's a lot of Jewish stuff in there. And we have to recognize that Paul couldn't get away from his Judaism even if he wanted to. He has a great heaviness, a continual sorrow in his heart. That word continual, by the way, is kind of interesting. It is the word now, it's unceasing or continual. Dielipo is the root, we won't go into it. It's a negator with that all there, you can tell. But we get the English word indelible, that della, della, that's the word for wiped away. And ah negates, it ah dello, we made it indeli. Indelible. So take that. I have a great heaviness, I've got an indelible sorrow in my heart. Now, what's indelible mean comes from the Greek word. It means you're not erasing this, you can't just blot this out. There's no way to just wash this away. Be done with that, turn your back and go a different way. It's indelible in Paul's heart. Now we move on to verse three. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsman, according to the flesh. It's one of the strongest things you could ever say. It's a powerful statement underscores Paul's love and passion and concern for his Jewish people. His desire again, is to be cursed. Anathema, that particular word, by the way, is anatithamae. Anatithamae tithamae is to place something anna is to place it again. Now that etymology doesn't help us too much. What anatithamae means in this case is to set something before turn it over to God. But it was always used in a negative by this point, it was always used in a negative sense. Anatithamai is I wish they would just set me in front of God and give me the judgment. Let me be the substitute. Here is what he's saying if I could be accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsman, according to the flesh, that's exactly what I would like. And so Paul again had such passion for the mystery, but at the same time he had such passion for the kingdom. If you think about this, even before Paul comes to know Christ, paul is working for the kingdom. The reason that Paul goes to Damascus and the other places to get rid of those Jesus followers is because he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. And that was going to cause a delay in the kingdom. And Paul was passionate about the kingdom even before he came to know Christ. Obviously coming to know Christ or Jesus as the Messiah would have impact on that, would change some of the knowledge on it, and he was just as zealous for that afterwards. And so here he is, as zealous as he is for the kingdom. He says, Count me out of the kingdom. If the nation could come into the kingdom, count me out of the kingdom. Again, that is the epitome of Paul, is this passion for Israel. So don't read and interpret Paul. Absent from his feelings and passions for Israel and for the kingdom. Paul is preaching the kingdom, I think, all the way to the last verses of Acts, to the nation of Israel. And he's preaching also, then the individual grace gospel. There's an overlap there. He's preaching both of them. And again, to miss his love and care and passion for Israel, I think is to misunderstand Paul. Now. I think it's a kingdom passion he's got here as well. We won't spend time on that because we've got a number of things in the next verse. We're actually only going to cover two more verses. We're going to go to verse five, but there's a lot packed in to verse four. So he again is interested would be accursed for my brethren, my kinsman, according to the flesh. We know who that is. We could figure that out. But just in case it's almost like Paul says, just in case someone's dumb as a box of rocks, I'm going to spell it out. My brethren, my kinsman, who are Israelites. He is definitely talking about the Israelites, and then he mentions six things that belong to the Israelites. Now, remember that. See if I can get over here. Here we go, right here, verses two, B through five. But really, let's just talk about verses four and five right here. These verses should be used as a hermeneutical rule. If it belongs to Israel, the Church should not take it. He is about to tell us six things that belong to Israel, and he is plain as day in telling us these six things that belong to Israel. And I would venture to say that we would not have to work hard to find the Church appropriating those things to themselves. And every time they do it, I'll say every time, it's replacement theology. It might be nice replacement theology or subtle replacement theology or ignorant replacement theology or unintentional replacement theology, doesn't matter. It's replacement theology, that's what it is. These things, these six things in verse four are explicitly stated. This belongs to Israel. So let's get back over here to it. So the Israelites, okay, to whom pertainth the adoption. Let's stop right here. To whom pertaineth the adoption. Now, we've got the word pertainth, obviously in italics. That literal word is not there. But I don't know that you could come up with a better way to translate that. My kinsman, my brethren, the Israelites, to whom is the adoption, they got it. Adoption is theirs. They own the adoption. Now, it is commonly believed and commonly taught that the adoption is something that you have and something I have, something we have, and we very often hear talk about, I'm an adopted son of God, I was brought in. I once was not as people, but now I am as people. I once was low ruhama, now I'm ruhama. To borrow from Hosea and misuse his words, we hear it all the time, right? The adoption is ours, we're adopted. The spirit of God cries out, Abba, Father, within us. We talked about that back in chapter eight, I think it was verse five, six, right in that area. And you can go back to that session, a few sessions back, but here again, Paul very explicitly comes and says, adoption belongs to Israel. So if you and I are going to claim adoption, we're going to have to use another passage. There's going to have to be some other place where Paul says, oh yeah, you too, you're adopted also, which I think is going to be a little hard to do when he says adoption pertains to Israel. No footnote, no disclaimer, not to other people, too, nothing in there. It pertains to Israel, and it is given there. So you can take passages like Hosea 222 23 that we looked at a moment ago, exodus 19, verses five and six, and show this is about adoption is an Israel thing. The concept of Israel being a child that God takes as his own, selects, chooses his child, you'll be my son, I'll be your father. That adoption concept comes through in the scripture very often. And so I think that adoption, like election, is something that belongs to Israel. Now, having said that, let me give you a word of warning. Well, first of all, in a snarky way, I'll put it this way, buckle up, buttercup, because what we're going to have here and what you might feel, this is the word of warning you might feel when we get through these six things, you might say, I ain't got nothing. They just took everything away, gave it all to Israel. What have I got? I think that the church, the bride of Christ. Israel is the bride of Christ. The church, the body of Christ, has tremendous blessing and glory and gift and grace that we can celebrate now till the cows come home, right? We don't need to take what's not ours. We got plenty to celebrate. So I don't need to glory that I'm one of the elect. I don't need to make adoption something mine in order to feel better about myself. I'm saved. I'm saved by grace through faith, not of works. He's given this to me. He's made me complete in Christ. Isn't that good enough? So I don't have to have all these other things. As a matter of fact, to use another Scripture, to whom much is given, much is required. There is a little blessing of saying, these things aren't mine. I don't have to endure to the end on all these things I'm complete in Christ as a gift. There is a blessing here. But we're going to take some of these things that we've talked about being ours before, and we're going to say, not really. That one's, not ours. I think on this issue of adoption, one of these days we'll get into studying it more fully. I wonder, somebody should start counting. How many times do I say, one of these days they're out there, we've got a list. It would stretch across the Grand Canyon. But anyway, one of these days let's get there. There's a lot of study in the Bible in there. And this would be a doctrinal topic about adoption. Let's go to all the adoption passages. The good thing is there's not that many of them, but let's go through all the adoption passages and read it from this perspective. The adoption pertaining to Israel. Remember, in our Hermeneutics class, one of the things we said is that you always just use the simplest scripture to interpret all the other ones. Well, this one's easy. Adoption belongs to Israel. Okay. Now, all the adoption passages, I need to interpret that towards Israel, and I think it'll give us some insight into adoption, what adoption is. So to them, pertainth the adoption, but not only that, also the glory. Okay, they've got the glory. Well, that seems broad enough, doesn't it? They got the glory. I tried today to find some passages of Scripture which speak of the glory of the church, the church having the glory. I kept bumping into passages like Isaiah, Israel, my glory, and every path I would go down to say, okay, well, now the church has the glory. And I use church in the sense of body of Christ. Now, the body of Christ has the glory. Every passage I came to is like, well, there's definitely some glorious things about the church, but the glory belongs to Israel. And you can look at that again in a number of ways on the glory. You could take this as, let's use the Hebrew, the Shakina. Remember, we often even attach the word glory to that, the Shakina glory. Shakina is the visible manifestation of God's glory, where you can see it with your eyes. Look, God's glory is right there in the tabernacle, in the temple. The body of Christ has never had that. I remember one time before I had removed myself from evangelical stupidity. I was at a meeting, southern dad was meeting, and Francis Chan was there speaking. I don't know if you've ever heard Francis Chan, but I don't recommend it unless you want a stomachache. But anyway, Francis Chan, and he went on and on. About, Lord, give us a visible manifestation of your presence. Just come and manifest yourself today here in this place. I thought that'd be scary. God did that. God has never done that, not once for the Southern Baptist, never. All of the let's pretend like the whole thing's worth something. Let's pretend like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. God has never, ever given a single manifestation of his glory to the Southern Baptist. Not one. I'm not saying Southern Baptist aren't saved. I'm saying they didn't have some nice organ music, you know, back when choir or whatever. It's been a long time. But I'm saying a glorious manifestation. You would have to spiritualize those words in order to say, oh, yeah, what a glorious manifestation. The only people on the world that have ever gotten a manifestation of God is Israel. Whether it's the Shakina glory or the flames, as a fire that came down upon Israel in the day of Pentecost or a number of other, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. Those visible and by visible here's what I mean by visible light reflects off of it. That's what I mean by visible scientifically light reflects off of it. It is actually there that's a visible manifestation of his glory. I think probably that's the reference here, the glory belongs to Israel. But you could look at that in a couple of other ways as well. You could look at it again as I already mentioned, the Isaiah passage, where God speaks of Israel, my glory, theirs is the glory. You could speak of the eschatological glory of Israel, where God is not going to set up the United States to be the world superpower during the days of the kingdom, and all nations are going to flock to Washington. He's got that glorious role for Israel, for Jerusalem. So even if you're a covenant theologian, I think you would have to say god does a lot more glorious work with and through Israel than anybody else. Theirs, Paul says, is the adoption. Theirs is the glory. And then the third thing, he comes. I don't know why I didn't mention this in last Sunday's sermon, but the covenants, the covenants are theirs. That would have made a lot shorter sermon, wouldn't it, last Sunday if you missed that. It's on the Unlearn it series on the new covenant. The covenants are theirs. And I think this includes all the covenants from Abraham and on once God made a covenant with Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant, the Sinai covenant, we often would call it the Mosaic covenant, the new covenant that was promised to Israel. Theirs are the covenants, as I said in that sermon. Go back if you want to dig into this more, and you missed that. Go back to what number was that sermon session? Number four. Five. Right in there of the Unlearned series. And look at that. We're not new covenant people. We're not under our covenant. We're at the time of the middleman, which is Jesus Christ. The old covenant over here, the new covenant out there. The covenants belong to Israel. We don't have a covenant. I wouldn't go to a church that was called covenant anything, because I would say these people have their theology so wrong, they even put it on the sign. We're not under a covenant to Israel, belongs to the covenant. To Israel. Pertainth the covenants. Again, if we'll take that as a Hermeneutic rule, imagine how much simpler the Bible comes. Every time we see adoption, that's theirs. Every time we see the glory, it's a little harder to interpret. But when we see the glory, that's theirs. When we see covenants, that's theirs. This is not talking about us. Let's keep looking for our stuff. This isn't it. We can have a lot of theological stuff, but this is not our stuff right here. And so this is part of the covenant. And again, Jeremiah, chapter 31, beginning in verse 31 through 34, talks about the new covenant. And it explicitly says this is for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah. So this is not like new stuff that we wouldn't have known had Paul not come. Paul's just explaining what the scriptures say. There's no way that you could take the Old Testament, for example, and come to the end in the order we've got it. You come to Malachi, read Genesis through Malachi, and come to the end and say, I think God's got a covenant with all of humanity that he is going to deliver someday through the death of his Son. You would never, ever say that. You read the Hebrew Scriptures and you would say the covenants belong to Israel. Paul, the Jews, Jew, he says the covenants belong to Israel. And I think indeed they do. And it ought to be a harmonutical rule. Okay, here's another one the giving of the law. There it is. To whom pertaineth the giving of the law. Sorry, covenant theologians, it's to Israel. The law pertains to them. Remember in Ephesians chapter two, I think I get my twos and threes mixed up. Ephesians chapter two, paul talks about those who are outside of the law, outside of the covenants. They just didn't have any hope. The law is not ours, never was ours. You and I, we didn't live under the law. We never were expected to live under the law. There never was a dispensation of the law. For those of us in the body of Christ, the law has never had anything to do with the body of Christ. We study it, we learn from it, we get some insights from it about God and man. But it was never an obligation. That was something that was given to them. And so if it's not ours, I'll borrow from the words of Peter Paraphrase here, if it's not ours, let's not put ourselves under it. They had a hard time living up to it. Why should we try? And Paul has already said in Romans, chapter seven, hey, there's a freedom from the law now. So to them, was the third thing the giving of the law, the fourth thing that he mentions? Or is this the fifth thing? Maybe this is the fifth thing that belongs to Israel is right there, the service of God. The service of God. Now, I know you might be coming along saying, you mean to tell me I can't even serve God? Well, exactly. It says right there, service of God belongs to Israel. This is one where I do think you have to dig into the Greek a little bit because I suspect you'll find places in Paul's writings where people in the body of Christ are servants of God and of Christ. And so if the Hermeneutic rule is, hey, service to God that belongs to Israel, then what about the places where Paul says, and I think we would include ourselves, I'm a bond servant of Jesus Christ. Does that mean we can't do that? You and I can't be servants of God or of Christ? I don't think it means that. Here is one, you have to be careful and dig down a little bit into this. And this is one of the, I'll say, just inherent issues with studying in English. If you are one, there are very few out there, but there are some in the people in the world who say thou shalt never look at the underlying word, as if it sort of displays some mistrust in the translation. I completely trust the translation here. Service is the right word, but you don't even have to know Greek to be able to use a strong concordance, right? And to take a look at the word here, where are we? Right here is the word LaTrea. LaTrea. This is not the root word for latrine, by the way. It's a different word, but it is the root word for litragia liturgy. Now, if you're, like me, grew up thoroughly evangelical, liturgy wasn't a word we used very much, didn't really know what liturgy was. But in mainstream Protestant theology, liturgy is used quite a bit in there. But this particular word, LaTrea is a word that really was used for a particular kind of service. Not just any service, in fact, not even just any kind of service of God. A very particular kind of service of God. It is a word that was used in, let's say, religious ritual. When you are carrying out religious ritual, like a priest might do that's when you would use the word LaTrea and a priest, you think of a priest in the Old Testament sense, in the Jewish sense. And he would receive the offerings, for example, receive the sacrifices and his LaTrea, his liturgy, his service to God would be to take that, to inspect the animal, to make sure it's all okay, to make sure the giver is giving it. In the right sense and everything's kosher, pardon the pun there on it and then to take it and to slay the animal in the correct biblical manner and to sacrifice the animal at the right time in the right place. All of that is the LaTrea of God, the service of God. And furthermore, even just not just for the priest, though it's probably a word you would mostly use, priestly, but even just the average Jew who is let's say he's going to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, that's his LaTrea, his service of God. This is something that you do in the religious sense. The only time it's used in the Bible is when it is that kind of ritual service that a Jew would give to God or it also came to carry outside of service of God, LaTrea of God. It came to be used in a cultic sense as well. But it was in the cultic sense that when you were doing the activity that was required of that cult. So let's just broaden the word cult there in the biblical sense and say this is only activity required of your God. When you're doing the activity required of your God, then you would use the word LaTrea liturgy. Now if you're a right divider you'll understand this or you'll know the answer to this question what is our service to God, our liturgy to God in the body of Christ? I know it's baptism. No. It's the Lord's Supper. No. It's footwashing, that's what it is. No. And all these things you would say I could add on you're bringing the tithes and the offerings. No, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, that's what it is. No, not exactly every kind of service that I would present and we're going to hit this when we come to Romans chapter twelve as well. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. This is your reasonable service. We'll pick up on that one when we get to Romans chapter twelve. But every kind of service that you and I give is a different word we could look in. Where would it be? Dulos. I thought I had a reference there for dulas. I don't, I just have the word there. When we would find the other places that would talk about service to God, it would be the word dulos. As a bond servant, I'm a bond servant of God and that just says I'm captivated by him, I want to serve him. But it's not a ritual kind of service. So this latria here is always or this service of God is this ritual service. Well, the Jews with the giving of the law had a ritual service that was given. You know what that means? You and I don't have a ritual service that's given to us and you know what that means? If we know that, then the preacher can't manipulate us anymore, we're free. We don't have to sit there and say, well, if you don't show up at least three times a month with your offering in hand, you have not given your reasonable service unto God. No, I don't have a liturgy that I have to give. There's not a set standard of you do this and then this and then number three, and then number four and number five, that's your liturgy. Don't have that, it's not ours. So how can you and I serve God? Let me be blunt, however you want to. That's how you can serve God however you want to, and find ways to fall in love with His Word and fall in love with Him, and you'll be a bond servant of God, doing it in all sorts of different and creative ways, on and on it's however you want to, okay? So the service of God belongs to Israel, and then if that service is theirs, when we come to that which is expected of us to do, we say, oh, wait a minute, there's nothing expected of us to do. He gave us a gift. If we do things, this is a bond servant, a do loss, not a la trio, okay? And he gives the last one right here, the promises. That's kind of bold, isn't it? The promises are theirs. And we could have an interesting discussion here, and I think you might agree with me, be interesting to have the discussion, but I think you would be hard pressed to find promises that are for the body of Christ. Rather, God says, I got a gift, I'll give it to anybody. You could take the promise, believe in the Lord and thou shalt be saved. And I suspect you could build a promise out of the rapture. The dead in Christ shall rise first those of us who are alive and remain caught up together with Him. Outside of that, the great promises on prayer, the promises on health and healing and prosperity, on spiritual victories, on and on, to get those those promises, you got to borrow them from Israel because they belong to Israel. What specific promises are given to the body of Christ? We could, and someday we should really go through and say, okay, here's all the things that maybe could be taken as a promise, and then let's really work through them and say what is actually stated as a promise. It's pretty easy to read the Old Testament, even Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and find promises in there that you look at that and say, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's just a promise right there. You see it in first. 2nd third. John Jude revelation. Here's, these promises. But you get into the Pauline Epistles, especially when he's speaking just to the church, and you get encouragements, blessings. The closest I can come is, and there's probably some more, but the closest I can come is with everything, with prayer and thanksgiving. Let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which passeth all understanding, will be yours in Christ Jesus. So you get the promise of peace. You don't even get the promise that you're going to get what you ask for, but you need peace. Do yoga? No, that's what my town tells me. Need some peace. Go out and do some yoga or shinzoir Shizu or something, I don't know. Go out and do that. Paul says, okay, pray about it, leave it at his feet. You'll have the piece of God. Very few promises, and those that are there again, I'll just be blunt. They don't promise much. So you and I, we're living this Christian life, and we're not promised that tomorrow we're going to be healthy, wealthy, or wise. We're not promised that, as we already looked at last week. All things work together for good. There's so many things that just really aren't our promises. We live a risky life. For the most part, it turns out, good. We're blessed, but we live under the natural world that God has set in place. And a little bit, it is what it is. And our promise is we'll see Jesus someday. I'm completing Christ. But you've seen the little books on God's promises to list all the promises of God. You know, the Pocket promise book or whatever it is. You go to one of those books and look at it. Here's what I suspect you're going to say. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Israel. Finally, you're going to say it's. Like all the promises pertain to Israel. Yeah, that's what Paul says. Those six things now, again, I told you a little bit I was going to pull the rug out from under you because the six things you wanted to have, now you have none of them. But there's a sense in which that's liberating. Now, I'm not trying to figure out why God hadn't come through on his promises. I guess I just wasn't faithful enough. I guess I didn't pray hard enough. I guess I've sinned too much. You don't have to figure all that out. You say ah. That's for Israel. I'm in a dispensation of the grace of God, which is a dispensation of the silence of God. I walk in the dark sometimes. I wish God would come, show me a manifestation of his presence. But now I walk by faith. Got a promise. I'll walk by sight someday. That's it. So the promises, they belong to Israel. That'd be kind of a bummer of a book, wouldn't it? Maybe Dispensational Publishing should sell it. I doubt many people would buy it. All the promises of the Bible that aren't yours. Look at all these all these promises. Israel of God. Here's yours. You're going to die. There it is. That's an encouraging book, isn't it? I don't know. You want to dedicate it to your mother in law or there's not much there. Okay, let's go on before I have to ring the snarky bell. The last verse. I'm running out of time here. Whose are the fathers? Israel. Really? Two more things. I didn't put them on the list. I had the six things in verse four. Two more things. But the fathers belong to Israel. That's not controversial at all. The patriarchs, well, it's for the most part not controversial. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Fathers of Israel. But we do get a little bit into our patriarchs, but most dispensationalists don't so much. Okay, yeah, the patriarchs, that's Israel stuff, genesis, we'll give that to them. So the fathers belong to them and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came. Now, let's make sure we understand this. Of whom. Let's take it as out of whom. How does young's literal put it? Whose are the fathers and of whom? Okay, the same thing. Let's consider this from so the fathers belong to them and from them as concerning the flesh, Christ came from them, christ came. Well, we know he came from God. Paul knows he came from God, and that's why he said here, as concerning the flesh. Now, these two here really, I would say, are the least controversial of the whole thing, because even covenant theologians say, yeah, God selected Abraham as the father of the Jewish people. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, if you want to go a little farther, you know, David, and whatnot those are Israel's, the fathers, the patriarchs, that was all about Israel, and Jesus Christ in the flesh came to Israel, through Israel, in Israel, by Israel. Not really controversial at all. So we would agree, yeah, okay, Paul, finally you said something I agree with. There is a matter of controversy here. However, you might not see it without doing a little comparison. Concerning flesh, Christ came, who is overall? Christ came, who is overall. God bless forever. Amen. Now, I want to ask you, in fact, I've got a live studio audience tonight here. I've got some West Virginians, I've got some Wisconsinites, and I've got some Calsanos. According to Romans, chapter nine, verse five, who is over all christ. Here comes Christ, who is overall. Now, that's not controversial to us. Yeah, christ is overall. What if you are not Trinitarian? What if you reject Christ as one of the Godhead? Then you would have a problem with this right here. Christ came, who is overall because you don't want him to be overall. What if, for example, you're Jehovah's Witness and Jehovah's Witness? They're witnesses of Jehovah. There is one God, and Jehovah is his name. That's it. And they do not believe that Christ is overall. So what do they do with Romans, chapter nine, verse five? I'll tell you what they do. They move the comma. Now, it's a little more difficult to see here, but what if you drop this comma right here of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came who's overall God blessed forevermore. Same words, different punctuation in the New World translation, which is the Jehovah's Witness translation? It says, I've got it on the outline there for you. Let's see if I can find it right here. Here it is. To them the forefathers belong, and from them the Christ descended according to the flesh period. God who is overall be praised forevermore. Amen. So they make God the one who is overall. Now, here's the issue, and this is the advanced class for those who want to argue the Trinity. You might be tempted to go to your Jehovah's Witness friends and say, you use that Bible that mistranslated this. They mistranslated it so that God was overall, not Christ was overall. But here's the issue. They didn't mistranslate it. It is a legitimate translation all based upon punctuation. They took the same Greek words and they just decided where to put the periods and the commas. And guess who translates periods and commas from the Greek? Nobody, because there is no periods and commas in the Greek. So every single bit of Punctuation in the Bible is interpretation. By necessity, it's interpretation. If you wanted a fully literal translation of the Greek or the Hebrew, we'll talk Greek right now. If you wanted a fully literal translation, it would have no punctuation. You can imagine what you could do with even Romans, chapter nine, if you had no punctuation, you could move things all over the place and come up with some amazing things, couldn't you, if you had no punctuation? Well, all of Romans nine. Romans one through nine. Romans one through 16. Romans through Philemon. Matthew through revelation. Genesis through revelation. The whole thing. Punctuation is always interpretive. Some translators come together, they say, oh, it could mean this, it could mean that. So you might say, are you telling me that the Jehovah's Witnesses are right? That that's an adequate translation? Well, yeah, sort of, yeah, that's what I'm telling you. So I'm telling you, if you want to argue the deity of Christ, which you should, if you're dealing with a Jehovah's Witness, if you want to argue the deity of Christ, that's not the place to do it from, because that's interpretive. And the issue of interpretive is, I feel like it should be this way. You feel like it should be that way. Feelings, nothing more than feelings. So we've got to broaden that. This is why I think, rather than studying apologetics, a person ought to study the Bible so that they can have a full enough grasp on the entirety of scripture that if they need to argue the deity of Jesus Christ, they can do it without something that's just completely feelings based. Now, I think, and this is one in which all of the major English translations and translators have gone the same way in the let's call it the Christological interpretation that we've got here in the King James and all the others except for New World translation, the argument would be the Christological or the doxological. Doxology. The praise God who's overall bless me forevermore. That's the doxil, that one. So I'm going to argue the deity of Jesus Christ. I'll probably go to say the Book of Colossians, the Gospel of John, many other places, and argue the deity of Jesus Christ there. If I can argue the deity of Jesus Christ there, then I can come back finally and say, with all that we've said, don't you think that overall is a description of Christ and not of God in this case, and could bring that about? I think the best translations that you can get, you're looking for a translation. You know my opinion on it, but the best translation is the translation that seeks to do as little interpretation as possible. But there is a degree in which you can't have a translation that does no interpretation because it's going from one language to another and they're not identical. If they were identical, I guess there would be no need to translate. If we spoke Greek, then we would use the Greek, it wouldn't eat it. So you have to do by nature some degree. I just think what you want in a translation is a translation that tries to be transparent, tries to show the things that they're doing along the way. You can figure out who they are, who did it, when they did it, where they did it, all those kind of things, and puts it up front and says, hey, we're going to do our very best, our dead level best here, to be accurate and transparent so that you can know what's out there. I think that we, the Christian world, should have done a better job at helping our kids as they grow up to know, hey, here's two ways you can take this scripture. Three ways you can take this scripture. Here's why we take it this way. Here's our defense of this. Here's the argument, here's what I think is best. But, yeah, you're going to get out there and someone's going to say, hey, let's take it another way. And I think we see that in the book of Romans. And that brings us to the conclusion of Romans, rightly, divided and verse by verse. And I thank you very much for being part of tonight's study as we come together. It's been a joy to have you, and I would love to say hello to you if you've given us a chat. Thank you very much. If you haven't, you could just go ahead and do that anytime. I'm going to reach over here and get where my view is not blocked. There we go. Who can I say hi to tonight? I can say hi to Neil in Vulcan, Alberta, and to Dr. Mike Lorna in Incoming, Pennsylvania. To Debin Darrell in Crystal Springs, Mississippi. To Everett in Sholo, Arizona, the national headquarters of yield typesetta. He's been doing some typesetting for me, too, and I appreciate that. You need a typesetter. Everett's your guy. Fresno, California. Good to see the fiendstras. Houston, Arizona. Welcome. Houston, Arizona. Did we move Houston and I didn't know about this? Houston, Texas. Jack and Teresa Arizona doesn't want Houston. Too hot in Houston. Darryl and Lisa Moundridge, Kansas. Thanks for being here, Debbie. Oh, I already mentioned Crystal Springs, didn't I? Check out Weatherford, Oklahoma. Good to see you. The hall family in Auburn, Kentucky. We got Edith and West Plains, Missouri. Welcome. And we got forney Texas coming in. Giles been praying for you all and the cancer treatments that Francine has been working on. Thank you. Roger in Maryland. Wabashaw, Minnesota tonight. Thank you. Appreciate it. And Nancy and family, the Trasks are present. Pueblo, West Colorado. Jim in Piedmont, South Carolina. Thank you. And Jerry. Southwest Georgia. Glad you're here. Got the Flint Hills dwellers in Kansas. Put the grandkids to bed. So we made it this evening. Few kids go to bed. We got Bible study. Good for you. It helps that we're an hour later there. Hour later, yeah. Trinidad, Colorado. Jeff, good to see you. Thanks for being here. And Scott down in the hill country of Texas listening on your phone tonight. Teresa gives a comment. Adoption Covenants Law how do evangelicals miss this? And then she gave a nice little compliment, too. You kind of wonder because it is pretty plain there to whom belong to whom pertain is. I didn't really look at it, but I suspect you could look at every bad translation on your shelf and they're still pretty plain on that. The Greek there. And the English is just so plain that it's hard to even mess that one up. In verse four. Eric in Ohio. Thanks for being here. Linda in Lexington. Welcome. Oh, dispensational times. I'm not sure who Dispensational Times is, but I like you. Cliff in Ontario. Kitchener, Ontario. Good to see you. Mike from Smithville, Missouri. Steven Winston. Salem, North Carolina. Thank you. That's one of those I noticed. Steven always abbreviates it. W. S, North Carolina. My advice is never move to a place you have to abbreviate. Pick something like taos. Carol in California. Good to see you. Phil and dreama. Lexington, Kentucky. Shirley out in Ridgecrest, California. Thank you. Lisa, good to see you. In Carbondale, Colorado. Beautiful Carbondale. We've got urban sherry. Good to see you. North Louisiana in the Pecan orchard tonight. Nice linen. London. Glad you're here. Don't have to abbreviate London, do you? Gerard in the Netherlands. Thanks for being here. Undeletable. Did I say undeletable? I don't know. I probably did, but I meant indelible if I'm the one that said undeletable, but that's a pretty good word, undeletable. There lots of commentary going on there that I'll have to read later to check on that. Helen, good to see you tonight. Last time I said I'm going to remember where Helen is from and. I do remember. I just can't recall. I kind of want to say Illinois, but I may be wrong. But helen. Glad you're here. Thanks for joining us, whoever else may be here. I probably missed some of those chats. Happy birthday to Trent. Today's his 19th birthday and he's here and spending it with us in the live studio audience and was a delight to have each one of you. And we'll be back tomorrow for Ask the Theologian, our broadcast on Sunday, both of them will be on next week. The only change is we will not be broadcasting on Monday here in the United States. It is Memorial Day, and so we will take that off. Yeah. Helen's from Virginia. Just exactly as I remembered it there. Thank you, Helen. You're right. As soon as you said Virginia, I was like, yeah, that's where Helen's from. And oh, I thought I wondered about that. Dispensational times is Roger. I was kind of thinking that from Twitter or something like that. Welcome, Roger. Your cover has been blown. Now we know. Thanks. Why is Roger not here? Did he hear there's work going on this week? Wish you were here, all of you. Oh, Dominican Republic. You sent me an email two days ago or something and I have been swamped and I didn't get to it. Don't give up. Send it again if you want. I want to talk to you. Dominican Republic. Thank you. I appreciate that word. I know I missed some people going through there, but anyway, Monday in the United States, I was saying is a holiday, Memorial Day weekend. And so that will give you some extra time to register for Labor Day weekend, the 9th annual Randy White Ministries retreat. And we will look forward to seeing you there. Anybody who can come, I would love to see you there. As we're going to talk about issues in right dividing. Well, Roger wishes he was here, too. You can make it by digging time. Roger, let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thanks for all of our good friends that gather around the great big electronic table and to the blessings that are ours. And we are encouraged in so many ways, even as we come to this passage of scripture that tells us some things that are not ours yet that is liberating. Dear Heavenly Father, to not carry burden or promises that are not ours, promises that we're disappointed by because it turns out not to be ours or burdens that we didn't need to carry. And to rightly divide the word of truth does help us to discover that which is ours and the freedom of that which is ours and the safety and security of that which is ours. As we're complete in Christ, in all of these things, we rejoice evermore. Dear Heavenly Father, help us to take the word of God to understand all the intricacies of the word of God, the issues of translating and interpreting the word of God, the doctrine that comes out of that and that we would be faithful through it all. I pray this in Jesus name, amen. God bless each one of you here tonight. Glad you are with us. Oh got another dominican Republic. Miguel, good to see you. Thank you, all of you guys, wherever you may be all around the world. Thank you. And I will see you tomorrow. For ask the theologian at 10:00 a.m.. Do I click the okay button? Nathan. Okay. He got me this new thing. It's like supposed to be automatic. I don't think that's the reason we had the catastrophe at the beginning of the hour when I think that was the internet service, but now I'm going to push the button. Magically things are going to happen, right? That's bad. When the coder says probably, we're going to see. Well, other than saying James, it worked. You guys ignore James, but that's a good study too. You can check that out. God bless everybody.