Chapter # 2 Paragraph # 3 Study # 3
July 20, 2014
Dayton, Texas
(060)
1769 Translation:
15 Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:
16 Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
1901 ASV Translation:
15 who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove out us, and please not God, and are contrary to all men;
16 forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved; to fill up their sins always: but the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
- I. The Behavior of the Jews.
- A. They killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets.
- 1. At the most obvious level, the level of the violence involved in "suffering" can reach to the actual death of the body.
- 2. At the most fundamental theological level, the level of antagonism is unbounded and driven by the pride of life which The Gospel directly confronts and destroys.
- a. This is not something that only the Jews did; the theology of self-aggrandizement will drive everyone who embraces it to violence against the truth and its messengers.
- b. Romans 11:28 clearly signals that The Church was not to develop the same murderous antagonism toward the Jews (which it did once it became "Catholic").
- c. This is the clearest and most extreme example of what Paul meant in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12.
- 3. In Acts 7:52 Stephen throws their murderous behavior up into their faces and receives their vicious reaction.
- B. They have "persecuted" Paul, Timothy, and Silvanus (et. al.).
- C. They "are not pleasing" God.
- 1. John 16:2 is a declaration that the twisted theology of "murder for God" is at the root of the Jew's behavior.
- a. The entire theology of the Jews, having its roots in Satanic self-aggrandizement, rests upon the premise that God is "pleased" by the kind of zeal that produces murder "for the truth".
- b. Without being able to justify murder as "pleasing God", the entire edifice of self righteousness crashes to the ground.
- 2. Putting this characteristic in place at this point presses the issue of the driving theology to the fore.
- D. They are "contrary to all men".
- 1. This is the inevitable result of all theologies of self-promotion: the house is divided and divided and divided and divided against itself and cannot stand.
- 2. In the final analysis this characteristic is both fundamental and inevitably self-destructive.
- E. They are forbidding us to speak to the nations.
- 1. This is the ultimate concept of "we are the people of God" so it is wrong to attempt to bring any others into His kingdom.
- 2. There is a potent antagonism toward the nations that seeks their destruction rather than their salvation (just as illustrated by Jonah).
- 3. This is the "always" concept of their form of sins that heads to the climax of total fulness of iniquity (as in "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full": Genesis 15:16).
- II. The Divine Reaction.
- A. The wrath has arrived.
- B. The intent is "unto the end".
