811 A song to our strong God! a shout to the God of Jacob! 2 Anthems from the choir, music from the band, sweet sounds from lute and harp, 3 Trumpets and trombones and horns: it's festival day, a feast to God! 4 A day decreed by God, solemnly ordered by the God of Jacob. 5 He commanded Joseph to keep this day so we'd never forget what he did in Egypt. I hear this most gentle whisper from One I never guessed would speak to me: 6 "I took the world off your shoulders, freed you from a life of hard labor. 7 You called to me in your pain; I got you out of a bad place. I answered you from where the thunder hides, I proved you at Meribah Fountain.
8 "Listen, dear ones - get this straight; O Israel, don't take this lightly. 9 Don't take up with strange gods, don't worship the latest in gods. 10 I'm God, your God, the very God who rescued you from doom in Egypt, Then fed you all you could eat, filled your hungry stomachs. 11 "But my people didn't listen, Israel paid no attention; 12 So I let go of the reins and told them, 'Run! Do it your own way!' 13 "Oh, dear people, will you listen to me now? Israel, will you follow my map? 14 I'll make short work of your enemies, give your foes the back of my hand. 15 I'll send the God-haters cringing like dogs, never to be heard from again. 16 You'll feast on my fresh-baked bread spread with butter and rock-pure honey."
821 God calls the judges into his courtroom, he puts all the judges in the dock. 2 "Enough! You've corrupted justice long enough, you've let the wicked get away with murder. 3 You're here to defend the defenseless, to make sure that underdogs get a fair break; 4 Your job is to stand up for the powerless, and prosecute all those who exploit them." 5 Ignorant judges! Head-in-the-sand judges! They haven't a clue to what's going on. And now everything's falling apart, the world's coming unglued.
6 "I commissioned you judges, each one of you, deputies of the High God, 7 But you've betrayed your commission and now you're stripped of your rank, busted." 8 O God, give them their just deserts! You've got the whole world in your hands!
831 God, don't shut me out; don't give me the silent treatment, O God. 2 Your enemies are out there whooping it up, the God-haters are living it up; 3 They're plotting to do your people in, conspiring to rob you of your precious ones. 4 "Let's wipe this nation from the face of the earth," they say; "scratch Israel's name off the books." 5 And now they're putting their heads together, making plans to get rid of you. 6 Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, 7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia and the Tyrians, 8 And now Assyria has joined up, Giving muscle to the gang of Lot.
9 Do to them what you did to Midian, to Sisera and Jabin at Kishon Brook; 10 They came to a bad end at Endor, nothing but dung for the garden. 11 Cut down their leaders as you did Oreb and Zeeb, their princes to nothings like Zebah and Zalmunna, 12 With their empty brags, "We're grabbing it all, grabbing God's gardens for ourselves." 13 My God! I've had it with them! Blow them away! Tumbleweeds in the desert waste, 14 charred sticks in the burned-over ground. 15 Knock the breath right out of them, so they're gasping 16 for breath, gasping, "God." 17 Bring them to the end of their rope, and leave them there dangling, helpless. 18 Then they'll learn your name: "God," the one and only High God on earth.
19 It's certainly possible to say, "Other branches were pruned so that I could be grafted in!" 20 Well and good. But they were pruned because they were deadwood, no longer connected by belief and commitment to the root. The only reason you're on the tree is because your graft "took" when you believed, and because you're connected to that belief-nurturing root. So don't get cocky and strut your branch. Be humbly mindful of the root that keeps you lithe and green. 21 If God didn't think twice about taking pruning shears to the natural branches, why would he hesitate over you? He wouldn't give it a second thought. 22 Make sure you stay alert to these qualities of gentle kindness and ruthless severity that exist side by side in God - ruthless with the deadwood, gentle with the grafted shoot. But don't presume on this gentleness. The moment you become deadwood, you're out of there. 23 And don't get to feeling superior to those pruned branches down on the ground. If they don't persist in remaining deadwood, they could very well get grafted back in. God can do that. He can perform miracle grafts. 24 Why, if he could graft you - branches cut from a tree out in the wild - into an orchard tree, he certainly isn't going to have any trouble grafting branches back into the tree they grew from in the first place. Just be glad you're in the tree, and hope for the best for the others.
25 I want to lay all this out on the table as clearly as I can, friends. This is complicated. It would be easy to misinterpret what's going on and arrogantly assume that you're royalty and they're just rabble, out on their ears for good. But that's not it at all. This hardness on the part of insider Israel toward God is temporary. Its effect is to open things up to all the outsiders so that we end up with a full house. 26 Before it's all over, there will be a complete Israel. As it is written, A champion will stride down from the mountain of Zion; he'll clean house in Jacob. 27 And this is my commitment to my people: removal of their sins. 28 From your point of view as you hear and embrace the good news of the Message, it looks like the Jews are God's enemies. But looked at from the long-range perspective of God's overall purpose, they remain God's oldest friends. 29 God's gifts and God's call are under full warranty - never canceled, never rescinded. 30 There was a time not so long ago when you were on the outs with God. But then the Jews slammed the door on him and things opened up for you. 31 Now they are on the outs. But with the door held wide open for you, they have a way back in. 32 In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.
33 Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It's way over our heads. We'll never figure it out. 34 Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? 35 Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice? 36 Everything comes from him; Everything happens through him; Everything ends up in him. Always glory! Always praise! Yes. Yes. Yes.
(Read Romans 11:11-21)
The gospel is the greatest riches of every place where it is. As therefore the righteous rejection of the unbelieving Jews, was the occasion of so large a multitude of the Gentiles being reconciled to God, and at peace with him; the future receiving of the Jews into the church would be such a change, as would resemble a general resurrection of the dead in sin to a life of righteousness. Abraham was as the root of the church. The Jews continued branches of this tree till, as a nation, they rejected the Messiah; after that, their relation to Abraham and to God was, as it were, cut off. The Gentiles were grafted into this tree in their room; being admitted into the church of God. Multitudes were made heirs of Abraham's faith, holiness and blessedness. It is the natural state of every one of us, to be wild by nature. Conversion is as the grafting in of wild branches into the good olive. The wild olive was often ingrafted into the fruitful one when it began to decay, and this not only brought forth fruit, but caused the decaying olive to revive and flourish. The Gentiles, of free grace, had been grafted in to share advantages. They ought therefore to beware of self-confidence, and every kind of pride or ambition; lest, having only a dead faith, and an empty profession, they should turn from God, and forfeit their privileges. If we stand at all, it is by faith; we are guilty and helpless in ourselves, and are to be humble, watchful, afraid of self-deception, or of being overcome by temptation. Not only are we at first justified by faith, but kept to the end in that justified state by faith only; yet, by a faith which is not alone, but which worketh by love to God and man.
(Read Romans 11:22-32)
Of all judgments, spiritual judgments are the sorest; of these the apostle is here speaking. The restoration of the Jews is, in the course of things, far less improbable than the call of the Gentiles to be the children of Abraham; and though others now possess these privileges, it will not hinder their being admitted again. By rejecting the gospel, and by their indignation at its being preached to the Gentiles, the Jews were become enemies to God; yet they are still to be favoured for the sake of their pious fathers. Though at present they are enemies to the gospel, for their hatred to the Gentiles; yet, when God's time is come, that will no longer exist, and God's love to their fathers will be remembered. True grace seeks not to confine God's favour. Those who find mercy themselves, should endeavour that through their mercy others also may obtain mercy. Not that the Jews will be restored to have their priesthood, and temple, and ceremonies again; an end is put to all these; but they are to be brought to believe in Christ, the true become one sheep-fold with the Gentiles, under Christ the Great Shepherd. The captivities of Israel, their dispersion, and their being shut out from the church, are emblems of the believer's corrections for doing wrong; and the continued care of the Lord towards that people, and the final mercy and blessed restoration intended for them, show the patience and love of God.
(Read Romans 11:33-36)
The apostle Paul knew the mysteries of the kingdom of God as well as ever any man; yet he confesses himself at a loss; and despairing to find the bottom, he humbly sits down at the brink, and adores the depth. Those who know most in this imperfect state, feel their own weakness most. There is not only depth in the Divine counsels, but riches; abundance of that which is precious and valuable. The Divine counsels are complete; they have not only depth and height, but breadth and length, Ephesians 3:18, and that passing knowledge. There is that vast distance and disproportion between God and man, between the Creator and the creature, which for ever shuts us from knowledge of his ways. What man shall teach God how to govern the world? The apostle adores the sovereignty of the Divine counsels. All things in heaven and earth, especially those which relate to our salvation, that belong to our peace, are all of him by way of creation, through him by way of providence, that they may be to him in their end. Of God, as the Spring and Fountain of all; through Christ, to God, as the end. These include all God's relations to his creatures; if all are of Him, and through Him, all should be to Him, and for Him. Whatever begins, let God's glory be the end: especially let us adore him when we talk of the Divine counsels and actings. The saints in heaven never dispute, but always praise.
