Having said categorically that God will not reject Israel, Paul says that God will save for Himself a remnant out of the Israelites. This elect will be saved by the grace of God. For the rest, it looked as if their hearts were hardened supernaturally.
This hardening of their hearts was a confirmation of their own stubbornness. It happened as a consequence of their rebellion against God and His plan. They were rendered insensitive to His plan and process. God gave these rebellious Jews a spirit of stupor, for they could neither see or hear. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 29:4 and Isaiah 29:10 to prove his point.
In the quoted verse from Deuteronomy, Moses is warning the Israelites that though they had witnessed personally all that the Lord God did to the Pharaoh and his officials and his land, all the great trial, miraculous signs and great wonders, they still rebelled.
Moses says, “To this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.” Same tragedy seems to have fallen on the Jews of Paul’s time too. It was obvious that they could not see or understand the sovereign acts of God. It was as if a supernatural or mysterious hand had brought this stupor on them.
In the quoted verse of Isaiah, the prophet says, “The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (of the prophets); he has covered your heads (of the seers).”
Isaiah was writing these prophecies in the 8th and 7th centuries, when Judah and Jerusalem were steeped in sin and neglected all warnings from God and persisted in their own evil ways. Their leaders and the people lived as if there was no day of reckoning. Consequently, they received severe punishment of banishment from their beloved city and land.
The history of these times seemed to be repeating during Paul's time in the 1st century AD. The Jews rejected Christ. The wrath of God was coming on them, as Paul warns in 1 Thessalonians 2:16. A fate bent on their destruction was blinding them to the reality of the situation. It looked as if God Himself did that to them, a divine preparation of the fattened calf for sacrifice.
Same blindness is prevalent in today's world also. People are bent on enjoying their lives with no care for morals and godly commandments. Same sex marriages, vices of the rich and the famous, political corruption, anarchy and wars, suppression of the poor have all polluted the earth. It is ripe for God’s wrath to fall upon it.
Paul quotes again Psalm 69:22, 23. Here David, while crying to the Lord in distress due to his enemies, curses them saying, “May the table set before them become a snare; may it become a retribution and a trap. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs bent for ever.” He calls God to pour out His wrath on them.
Men were sitting at their tables and feasting comfortably without a care in the world. There was a false sense of security, without knowing the disaster that was coming upon them. Similarly, Jews thought themselves to be safe because they were Abraham’s descendants. They were self-satisfied, with the confidence that they were the chosen people of God.
Paul saw this arrogance wherever he went preaching in the Jewish synagogues of the Roman world in his missionary travels. They were blind and were groping in the darkness. They were hardened as if a callus was growing over their hearts. They had become insensitive to God’s warnings. A person who continues to sin will become insensitive to sin itself. That is what had happened to the Jews.
We need to examine our hearts and see whether our hearts have become callus-ridden. Whether we have become immune to sin and sinful ways. Is there rebellion in our hearts and arrogance in our steps, because we think we are Christians, and hence have a passport to heavens. We need to pause and think.
We need to walk in the light of the Gospel and not in the ways of the world. We need to take the warnings given in the Scripture seriously and lead our lives in the fear of God. In obedience to His words, there is life. Let us embark on that light and not darkness and death.
God save us to be unblemished in this world of evil ways.
Amen.
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