Hardness. Romans 11:7-10 V.7. National Israel is still away from God because they still keep to their traditions and try to keep the law. Spiritual Israel are those people who seem so insignificant and small in number that they are hardly taken into account as of any value in the world. In a day to come, all of those “remnant people” will be gathered together as a great, vast, innumerable multitude of people. They will all be saved by God’s grace alone and they will all love Him with all their hearts.
When people choose their own way and stubbornly refuse to accept God’s saving grace, He punishes their sin by hardening their hearts just as they first chose to do themselves. He takes away their ability to see and hear the truth or to repent of their sin. To reject God’s grace and salvation through faith, is the same as saying to God, “Don’t bother me with Your truth. I’ll get there my way.”
V.8. Because the nation rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, didn’t mean all individuals did. “The spirit of slumber” or “stupor” isn’t on the nation because God wants that. It is because people then and now reap the consequences of our own choices that have good or bad results depending on the action and reason for it. To resist the things of God makes people confused, spiritually deaf and blind. Paul wrote a quotation from Psalm 69 that tells the results of spiritual blindness and rejection.
The Gospel when received by faith, feeds and strengthens our soul and spirit. If it is rejected it becomes a trap and snare that will leave a person eternally lost. To receive the message of the Gospel gives sight to our intellect and strength to our lives and conduct as Christians. It opens the door to an abundant life for a believer. Believers accept Christ personally rather than try to make themselves justified before God. Everyone who is saved will someday join in praising God for His amazing grace to undeserving sinners. God’s grace to us and our faith in Him, are the complete opposite of works and law-keeping that so many are committed to.
V.9. How sad it is when there is an earnest search for what is right, but one insists it must be reached on their own terms and in their own way. Israel did this as a nation. They were seeking righteousness but did not get it because of stubbornness. God removed from them the ability to see and hear spiritual truths from God. Because they refused to repent at the call of God, they were unable to repent as the consequence of their rebellion.
Spiritual hardness is often seen in individuals, but it was seen nationally in Israel. It happens when people of special privilege trust in themselves and that position, rather than in God. To resist God and His free grace is like telling Him to leave you alone. In the case of Israel, He did. He left them alone. Similarly, in the people of privilege today, when they trust in themselves and their position rather than God who gave them the blessing of life itself and the "table" of privilege, they too will be hardened and unable to understand the Gospel. This appears to be happening in our country and to us as a nation. The very "table" of our blessing is becoming a snare to us as a people.
V.10. Israel turned away as a nation from their "table" of privilege and what was a blessing to them became a snare. There are "tables" today that were intended to be of special benefit to the saints of God that have misled people. To many professing Christians, the Lord's Supper has been misrepresented and has become a snare to them. The example of what happened to Israel when they insisted on the law and their traditions to be the means of pleasing God, instead of recognizing the grace of God to them when He sent His Son to be their Savior, is happening today to those who claim to be Christians by their own works and ways. The darkness and hardness of Israel is still on-going and will be until the Great King sits on David's throne. "Repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ" is the way individual Jews and Gentiles can avoid that soul-damning hardness.