Let’s take our Bibles and turn to Romans 11:25-36. We’re in a series called Things to Come. We’re looking at the great tipping points and turning points of prophecy and we’re going to start a two-part sermon. We’ll wrap up next Sunday morning on the Future and the Nation of Israel. A message I’ve called most favored nation. There are certain agreements between nations when they’re called the most favored nation status and they work together economically and when I think of the nation of Israel among the nations in God’s eyes, they have a most favored nation status.
So, we’re beginning a two-part sermon most favored nation. It’s based on Romans 11:25-36. And given the world we’re in and all that’s unfolding in the Middle East and we have watched again Israel in peril since October the 7th, this is a good reminder.
Let’s take time to read God’s word. You can remain seated, follow along. New King James is what we’re reading from. Romans 11:25. For I do not desire brethren that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so, all Israel will be saved as it is written. The deliverer will come out of Zion and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.
Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor?” “Or who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him?” For of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
Nobody cares much these days about Edsels except maybe Leroy Walker of Beulah North Dakota. Edsels were a phenomena of the American automobile world in the late 1950s when someone 110,000 of these vehicles were produced. They were somewhat weird looking and they proved to be one of Ford’s object failures. No one bothers about them or cares about them except a few diehards who have a love affair with the Edsels like Leroy Walker, who’s got 226 of them scattered throughout his junkyard. They are extinct specimens in the automotive landfill of transportation history.
They’re turning this story in a biblical direction. It’s easy to think of Israel as the disappointing flop of God’s redemptive production plan. Her history is stained and blotched by inconsistency, infidelity and idolatry. She did not keep covenant with the God who bound himself to her. She pled footsie with the surrounding pagan nations. She demanded a king like the other nations. She killed God’s prophets and ultimately, she rejected God’s son.
And for the reasons and many more as Dale Ralph Davis notes, “It would be easy to assume that God has consigned her to oblivion, shame and scourging that she so richly deserves. There she can rust and rot away far from the kingdom and the glory.”
But such an assumption would be wrong. The biblical writers put the brakes on such thinking the nation of Israel is not disposable. It cannot simply be abandoned like Edsels in a vehicular graveyard. The testimony of scripture is that God will keep faith with Israel. That God intends is to fulfill all his promises and he made to this elect nation. Israel enjoys the most favored nation status within God’s world and her future is as bright as the promises of God are many and true.
In the passage before us, the one we were about to study this morning on next Sunday morning, the Apostle Paul would remind us that God has not forgotten Israel, that just before the return of Jesus Christ on his second coming, the nation will be restored and healed and forgiven and all Israel who are alive at that time will be saved.
There will be a national corporate revival in the nation of Israel and it will be distinct from the history of the church. This is one of the things to come. In our series, we’ve looked at the signs of the times. We’ve looked at the rapture of the church prior to the day of the Lord. We have looked at the judgment seed of Christ, the tribulation period, the advent of antichrist, and now we’re looking at the revival and survival of the Jew. We’re looking at the restored fortunes of the nation of Israel.
While Israel’s final restoration awaits a future day at the end of the church age, the fullness of the Gentiles and the coming of the deliverer out of Zion, the second coming of Jesus, you and I have lived to witness the miracle by the Mediterranean. We’ve witnessed the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948.
And I’m going to tell you that event is fraught and wet down with prophetic significance. I agree with most premillennial scholars in saying that Israel is the super sign of the end times. If you want to know what God is doing in the world, look at Israel. She is God’s prophetic timepiece. You can tell the time by looking at what God is doing or not doing in the nation of Israel.
According to the Bible in the last day, as all eyes will be on Israel. The tribulation is called Jacob’s trouble. The rise of the antichrist will be tied to a peace agreement with Israel. The last days we’ll see a reconstituted nation and a rebuilt temple within which the antichrist will declare himself God.
The end time evangelists are 144,000 saved and sealed Jewish evangelists with two more possibly Moses and Elijah. The battles of Gog and Magog and the battle of Armageddon or the campaign of Armageddon are all centered in the land of Israel.
Jesus is coming back to earth. He’s coming back to a place on earth called the mind of olives to deliver Israel from her enemies. Israel is God’s timepiece. Israel is God’s centerpiece. The church has not replaced her. God has not abandoned his promises to her. I like what Adrian Rogers says, “These are dangerous days in which we live. The storm clouds are gathering, the lightning is flashing and the lightning rod is Israel.”
Christians cannot deny or ignore the significance of the nation of Israel, the eyes of the entire world or upon the tiny state of Israel and your eyes need to be there too because the Jews in Israel are the people and land of destiny. As the Jews go, so goes the world. Israel is God’s yardstick. Israel is God’s measuring rod. Israel is God’s blueprint. Israel is God’s program for what he’s doing in the world. Amen and amen.
So, let’s come to this passage that is before us. We’ll look at it this morning and next time if you want an outline, here’s where we’re going. We only cover one thought this morning, but we’ve got four headings here around which we will gather all our thoughts. The clarification, I don’t want you to be ignorant concerning this mystery, concerning Israel. We’ve got the condemnation in the church age during the times of the Gentiles, a hardness and a blindness will afflict the nation of Israel as God judges them for their unbelief.
But following the clarification and following the condemnation, Paul talks about the conversion that when the times or the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then God will save all of Israel at the end of the tribulation and upon the return of the deliverer who will come out of Zion and the one who will turn on godliness from Jacob.
And then you’ve got the celebration. As Paul looks back over Romans 9, Romans 10, Romans 11, and he realizes that God is sovereign in human history both in the nation of Israel and the nations, Paul says “Unto him, be all glory and power forever.”
Now let’s put the text in its context ever so quickly. We’re right at the end of these three chapters, 9, 10, and 11. We’re jumping in, we’re parachuting in, so let’s just get our bearings a little bit. The first thing I would want you to see is that Paul, in these verses that we’re looking at is anticipating a question that would’ve arisen in the mind of a Jewish believer in Rome as they read the letter to the Romans because back in chapter 8, Paul talks about what?
Nothing will separate us from the love of God. There’s this unbreakable bond between God and his people. That’s the promise of God. And yet the Jewish believer will look at the state of Israel during that time and wonder if God is keeping his promise to the nation.
And so, Paul has anticipated that. In fact, he tells us in these verses before us that Israel is still beloved by God for the sake of the fathers verse 28. And Paul wants him to know that although blindness and hardness is marking the heart of the Jewish people at this moment, God will remove that. God will restore this nation to its favored status.
And so, I think that’s where we’re at in chapter 9, 10 and 11 right here at the end of 11, Paul is anticipating that question and he wants him to know that God will keep his promise. God will forever love a people whom he has set his love on a nation elect beloved of God.
The second thing I want you to see in this section is that the culmination of what Paul has been arguing throughout chapter 9, 10 and 11. Paul at the beginning of this chapter asked the question, “Has God forgotten Israel? Has God forsaken Israel? Has God cast away his people?” Certainly not. God forbid, never. And so, that’s where we are at. God is not done with the nation of Israel. Her future includes a complete and corporate salvation. The church has not replaced Israel. The nation will enjoy future blessings distinct from the church.
If you go back to chapter 9, verses 3 and 4, Paul speaks of Israel, “My kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites to whom belongs to the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the temple service on the promises.” It’s in the present tense. Paul’s saying even with the establishment of the church and the setting aside of Israel and the judicial judgment of God in terms of hardness and blindness. You know what still belongs to them? All of those things which include the promises of future blessing.
You go to chapter 11 and verse one, as I just quoted, “Has God rejected his people?” God forbid and that brings us to our passage, kind of hop skipping and jumping. I do not want you to be ignorant. I don’t want you uninformed. I don’t want you to be wise in your own estimation, parenthesis regarding the Jew. Don’t be conceited regarding the nation of Israel in her fallen state because there is a time of hardness. There is a time in which God is calling out Gentiles from among the peoples into the church, but when that time is full, then all Israel will be saved when the deliverer will come from Zion.
Israel’s salvation is not only explicitly declared, but it is linked with the promises of the Old Testament because Paul goes on in verses 26 and 27 to quote the Old Testament. Not all the promises, the Old Testament has been transformed and assumed into the life of the church taught by replacement theology, which we’ll get to in a moment.
In fact, I like the words of CEB Cranfield who’s a very well-known commentary in the Book of Romans. He says this, “It is only where the church persists in refusing to learn this message where it secretly perhaps quite unconsciously believes that its own existence is based on human achievement and so fails to understand God’s mercy to itself that it is unable to believe in God’s mercy for still unbelieving Israel.”
And so, I love this statement, and so entertains the ugly and unscriptural notion that God has cast off his people Israel. It is an ugly, an unscriptural notion to believe that God has done with the nation of Israel. So, that’s where we’re at.
My introductions tend to be long when it’s a two-week sermon, so hang in there. But here’s another little thought. This is an important passage because its message needs to be heard because in my research and just on my own experience, I’m watching a shrinking of interest in and support for the nation of Israel among the church today.
Increasingly the nation of Israel is viewed as no more significant than the nation of Poland or Hungary because you see God’s done with her. The church has replaced Israel. So, Israel in the land today since 1948, many in the church would say there’s no significance to that. It’s such an ugly and unscriptural notion, but it’s taking hold within the church.
A pro-Israel stance is viewed as unnecessary. There’s an increasing dismissive and disdainful attitude towards Israel and the Jewish people. The very thing that Paul warns us against in Romans 11, “Lest you become conceited and wise in your own eyes as you look upon the nation’s fall.” Paul warns us not to go there, not to be that.
Have we forgotten Genesis 12:3? Which I think is still operative today when God made a promise to Abraham an unconditional covenant with Abraham and says what? “I’ll bless those who bless you and I’ll curse those who curse you.” I don’t want to live under God’s curse. I want to live under God’s blessing.
And my treatment of the Jewish people is party to that and part of that. That doesn’t mean we whitewash their sins. That doesn’t mean we don’t call out their idolatry and their rejection of Christ. Doesn’t mean even in the present war, we don’t hold them to international norms, but it does mean we love them and we understand their favorite status among the nations and then they’re a vehicle of hope and blessing to the Gentile nations.
I owe a lot of my love for Israel, not just to God’s word primarily, but to my mother who never visited Israel. I wish she’d lived long enough for to go on one of our trips. But in our little home in Belfast, whenever the news was on and something must come out of the Middle East, invariably that verse would come out of her mouth watching the news. Those who bless Israel, God will bless. And those who curse Israel, God will curse.
In fact, it’s frightening, evangelical Christians, especially young evangelical Christians are falling behind in their commitment to Israel in a book on Israel. I read that just in the last several years, there’s been a 75% drop in support for Israel among young evangelicals. 2018, 69% of young evangelicals said they supported Israel, only 5.6% allied themselves with the Palestinians and 25% didn’t take sides. In 2021, that’s three years later, 33% supported Israel, 24% sided with the Palestinians and 42% reported they took no sides.
The shrinkage has been so large that Israelis are concerned about the future supportive evangelical Christians in America. What was striking also about this finding is that the poll revealed that 44% of young evangelicals said that their view on Israeli-Palestinian politics or issues was not affected by the religious or theological belief. That’s staggering.
So, the Bibles get nothing to do with how you view the nation of Israel. We’ve got to turn that trend around. So, I’m going to do my part a little bit this morning and next Sunday morning to do that. So, now we come to the text. We’re just going to cover one thing, the clarification verse 25. “For I do not desire brethren that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion that blindness and part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so, all Israel will be saved.”
I mean when the plain sense of the tax makes sense, seek no other sense. All Israel will be saved in a future day. God’s not done. So, let’s look at the clarification. Paul begins this section with the desire to dispel ignorance regarding the nature of Israel’s suspension and spiritual blindness. Israel has been set aside. We are now in the church age what Paul calls the coming in of the fullness of the Gentiles. God has judicially, partially hardened the heart of the Jewish nation, and anybody that does evangelism among Jewish people will find that to be so.
It doesn’t mean that no Jew will be saved during the church age, of course not because Paul was a converted Jew. But Paul’s recognizing that indeed the nation has been suspended and there’s a spiritual blindness and hardness that marks her, but he also fears in the light of that, that the Gentile Christian especially will have a conceited attitude, an arrogant attitude towards Israel.
So, Paul says, “I want you to know something. This is my desire. I don’t want you to be ignorant concerning the blindness and hardness that has happened to Israel.” The word mystery here, we’ve talked about this word before. It’s a Greek word that speaks of something previously unrevealed. It’s not something that can’t be understood or something that’s uncanny or mysterious. This is a word that means something that has hitherto been veiled. Speaks of a New Testament truth not clearly found in the Old Testament. There’s the mystery of iniquity, there’s the mystery of godliness, there’s the mystery of Christ in you. There’s several mysteries you’ll find throughout the New Testament.
Now, the mystery under consideration here this morning is focused on Israel’s partial judicial and spiritual hardening at the hand of God. And here’s the mystery that it will last only as long as divinely specified. I have a converted Jewish friend who’s been at Kindred many years ago and pastors in Florida, Steve Kreloff. He wrote a wonderful old book on Romans 9, 10 and 11. And here’s what my sea of Jewish friend Steve says. He points this out that the mystery is centered on the length of Israel’s suspension and spiritual blindness.
God has judged Israel in the past. She has indeed borne the curse of God because of her lawbreaking and idolatry. That’s not a mystery. Israel’s disobedience and God’s judgment of Israel is not a mystery. But in the last day since Jesus’ advent, what is being shown is here, the length of the judgment. This mystery is being unfolded. Here’s how long this hardness will take place. It will take place until the fullness of the Gentiles have come in and then all Israel will be seen.
Paul is crystal clear. The present setting aside of Israel as the center circle of God’s redemptive action is partial and temporary. It’s not final. Can I say that again? It’s so simple, but the replacement theologists will pull the wool of your eyes and covenant theologians will pull the wool of your eyes as if God is done with Israel as an ethnic people and a nation. He’s not. This blindness is partial. This judgment is temporary and it ends when the fullness of the Gentiles have come in. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Terminator, they will be back. That’s what Paul is reminding us here.
In fact, that old converted Jew and brilliant man Charles Feinberg talks about that it’s like a time lock on a bank vault. Some banks have these large vaults and bolts and locking mechanisms that are attached to a timer and they only open at a certain time and Charles Feinberg is likening, you know what? There’s a time lock set by God regarding Israel’s downfall and dismissal, but when the fullness of the Gentiles are come in, God will go back to working with them. That’s something we want to get down.
This partial and temporary hardening of Israel should not lead to conceit. Did you notice that? I do not desire, I do not desire brethren that you should be ignorant of this mystery, this truth that’s been hitherto veiled lest you be conceited or wise or arrogant or proud in your own opinion regarding the blindness that has happened to Israel. Understand it’s partial, understand it’s temporary, understand it’s not permanent.
I like the Bible knowledge commentary from Dallas Seminary on this. God’s sovereign plan to put Israel aside temporarily in order to show grace to Gentiles is no basis for conceit on the part of Gentiles, or sorry on Israel, is no basis for conceit on the part of Gentiles. It is designed to display further the glory of God.
I hope you don’t show conceit or arrogance towards the Jewish people. I hope I don’t do that because God calls us not to do it. And there are several reasons actually. I’m just going to quickly go through in Romans 9, 10, 11 for that number one, they’re beloved of God that you read that in verse 28 of our passage concerning the gospel. They’re enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they’re beloved, they’re elect and you and I need to understand that.
Number two, they possess many spiritual privileges of which we are the beneficiaries. Back in chapter 9 and verse 3, we noted that it is from Israel and through Israel that we have verse 4, adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God and the promises of whom our fathers and from whom according to the flesh Christ came.
As old JC Ryle in his book. Are You Ready for the End Time? Says it’s through the Jewish people that we have a Bible. It’s through the Jewish people we heard the first preaching of the gospel. It’s through the Jewish people, let the Messiah came. We have no grounds to be conceited as Gentiles. This is a privileged people. They’re a vehicle of blessing to the world.
According to Romans 11:18-24, their losses are game. They’re the natural branches but they’re being cut off because of their disobedience and a wild olive branch is being grafted in. But that doesn’t mean that the natural branches can’t be taken up once again, but their darn fall is our elevation. And Paul tells you not to boast about that.
It is God’s sovereign and free mercy, not human merit that saves any one of his both Jew and Gentile. Romans 11:30-32 and then just finally, God is not done with Israel as a nation as our attack shows. He promises a glorious future restoration in which the nation will turn on mass those that survive the tribulation to Jesus Christ.
Now, that said, here’s a point we’ll focus on for the remainder of the time. God has a sensitivity to those who are insensitive to Israel. Don’t be conceited. That’s what God is telling us this morning through his servant Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God has a sensitivity to those who are insensitive to the Jewish people given what we just said. We’re the beneficiaries of the spiritual privileges given to them. Their fall is our elevation, but God’s not done.
The Bible is clear as crystal, whoever seeks to injure or insult God’s chosen people touches the apple of God’s eye. Zechariah 2:8 tells us Israel is the apple of God’s eye. That’s the pupil, that’s the most sensitive part of your eye. In fact, this warning against conceit toward Israel speaks of two issues today, one in the world and one in the church. Watching my time here.
With regards to the world, I think this text and this warning about conceit towards Israel is a warning against anti-Semitism. I hope you’re never touched by or touch anti-Semitism. John MacArthur says “God has not finished with his chosen people and even during this time when Jews as a nation are severed from God’s special blessing because of unbelief, anti-Semitism in any form is anathema to the Lord Jesus himself a Jew.”
Yet today, post October 7 world in which Israel suffered its single greatest loss of life since the Holocaust, when Hamas butchered 1,400 Jews, took hundreds captive and injured thousands. We’re watching a world awash with subtle and pronounced anti-Semitism. The walls of some of our premier universities have become blackboards for words like “Kill all Jews.”
The British Parliament, did you notice this week in London was used as a projection screen for the call to drive the Jews from Israel from the river to the sea, which is a call the genocide on the British Parliament. England’s got a Muslim problem if you haven’t noticed. Pro-Israeli voices are being censored in the classroom, locker room and boardroom.
And this is just the latest wave of anti-Semitism. The waters of which have been rising for some time both in the west and around the world. I picked up a little book at NRB this week called Antisemitism by Dr. Susan Michael and in it she says this, “According to a 2014 study, 25% of the world’s population, 1.1 billion people hold anti-Semitic views even though 70% of those surveyed had never met a Jew or visited Israel.”
An anti-defamation league survey conducted in 2019 getting a little closer to our day of 18 European countries discovered about one in four Europeans harbor pernicious and pervasive attitudes towards Jews. In a latest study January 2023, the London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League on the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago revealed the number of Americans harboring extensive anti-Semitic prejudice has doubled since 2019 to its highest levels in decades.
Just a window into the world we’re living in and we can’t control the world, but we can control our response to the world. And as believers we’re warned by Paul not to be wise in her own eyes, not to be conceited, not to stand over a nation under God’s judgment as Israel is experiencing right now and laugh, mock and don’t hold out hope for them.
In fact, talking about anti-Semitism, sadly, the church has not escaped the specter of anti-Semitism. Jerome, it translated the scriptures in the Latin is quoted as saying God hates the Jews. He mustn’t have translated Romans 9, 10 and 11 right. He said God hates the Jews, therefore I hate the Jews. Richard the Lionheart during the time the crusades king of England in 1189 expelled all the Jews from Great Britain because he said they were causing earthquakes and famines.
In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas said It is perfectly within the law to hold the Jews accountable because they crucified our Lord. There’s been a strain of anti-Semitism and Catholicism for many, many years, but Protestantism didn’t escape it either. It pains me to bring up the name of Martin Luther, protestant reformer, but early on in his ministry he was sympathetic toward the Jews. In fact, he wrote a pamphlet called Jesus was Born a Jew in which he commends the evangelizing of the Jews and their instruction in scripture.
However, in later years after no success in Jewish evangelism, Luther revealed a strain of anti-Semitism. In a book entitled Concerning The Jews and Their Lies, he admonished Christians to destroy Jewish homes and synagogues with fire, cover them with dirt, silence rabbis on pain of death and seize Jewish wealth. Here’s part of his pamphlet to sum up speaking to the German nobles and princes, “Dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mind does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of the insufferable devilish burden the Jew.”
Charles Feinberg in his book on Israel, I just talked about him, a Jewish heart said, Luther is so stock-stone devil iron hard that in no ways can it be moved. They are young devils damned to hell to convert these devil brats is an impossibility. Sad, isn’t it? There’s a little poem, put it high odd of God to choose the Jew, but not so odd as those who choose the Jewish God and hate the Jew.
I remember when my daughter Angela was at the Master’s University campus in Israel on a semester along with one of her sisters later on. She was exposed to some of Luther’s writings on the Jews and it troubled her so much. She called me up one day and said, “Dad, is Martin Luther a Christian?” Such were some of the statements that one wonders how they can be harbored in a regenerate heart.
I’m not about to judge the standing of Luther. I believe he was a Christian, but I’ll tell you what, on this area he was a poor one and in this area his statements are sub-Christian and to be rejected. There’s some evidence he may have softened towards the latter part of his life.
Secondly, with regards to the world, this of text of ours, verse 25, about conceit towards Israel is a warning against anti-Semitism, and then secondly, with regards to the church. It’s a warning against replacement theology. This is a theology espoused by reformed theologians that espouses the idea that God has done with Israel as a corporate entity, that through her obedience, God has set her aside permanently. She has been succeeded by the church.
Jesus is the true Israelite, Jesus is the true Israel, and there are those who are in union with him since he’s the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and he kept the law, those who are in union with him are part of the Israel. But at its roots, at its baseline, it’s the idea that God is done with corporate Israel as an entity. The land promises are simply assumed in the church that in some day the blessed will inherit the earth or a new heaven and a new earth.
There’s no future for the nation apart from the church. Maybe there’ll be an end time revival through gospel preaching through the auspices of the church, but the nation is kaput. I would call this the greatest identity theft in human history. It’s one thing to steal someone’s identity, to use it to defraud them. It’s another thing to steal a whole nation’s identity and make them irrelevant.
As I said, I think paraphrasing a statement by Hank Hanegraaff, the existence of the nation of Israel today in their land is no more significant than the land of Hungary or the country of Poland. Okay. For the time we have left, I’m going to quickly go through some arguments against replacement theology. This ugly unbiblical notion that God has set Israel aside permanently.
Here’s argument number one, and I could go deeper than I’m about to, but I’m really just going to stir up your mind to do some thinking about this. Number one, the nation of Israel before and distinct from the church was chosen by God and remains to this day beloved of God. Isn’t that what our tax is showing? We’ll get into the depths of it next week.
Concerning the gospel, they are our enemy. Right now, the Jewish people do not receive or welcome the gospel. You’ll find that on the streets of Jerusalem, those that have visited have been in some areas accosted by Orthodox Jews and others. Israel is an enemy of the gospel for the most part today, and that’s sad and heartbreaking and it’s part of their partial hardening from God.
But Paul says, “While there are enemies in the gospel, they are elect. They are still beloved of God. The nation of Israel was chosen by God and remains so to this day.” Romans 11:28, you can go back to Deuteronomy 7:6-11 and Deuteronomy 9:1-6 to hear about God’s choosing of them as an elect nation, a favored status among the nations.
And you’ll know this election has nothing to do with merit, which means this, Israel was not chosen because she was strong, good, righteous, and a cut above the rest. Now, she was weak, little among the nations. She was not chosen because she was good. She was sovereignly chosen by God’s free mercy. And if that’s the case, God will not cease to love her when she’s bad. Because here we see in verse 29 of our tax for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Nothing will separate us from his love once he sets his love on us.
You go to Jeremiah 31:3, what does God say to Jeremiah? “I have loved you speaking of Israel with an everlasting love.” I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think everlasting is a long time. In fact, Jeremiah 31:36 talks about the fact that the sun will have to stop shining and the moon will have to fall out of the sky before God will stop loving Israel.
I like what Warren Wiersbe says concerning Romans 11:27-28, this is of course a continuation of the quotation from Isaiah 59, but the emphasis is on the covenant of God with Israel. God chose Israel in his grace and not because of any merit in her. If the nation was not chosen because of its goodness, it cannot be rejected because of its sin. You’ll hear this all the time. God has rejected Israel because of her sin.
But that statement is so good. If the nation was not chosen because of its goodness, cannot it be rejected because of its sin? Election means grace, not merit. The Jewish people are enemies to the believing Gentiles because of their hostility towards the gospel, but to God the Jewish people are the beloved for the father’s sake.
That’s why John MacArthur created quite a stir some years ago at the Shepherds Conference, when looking at our reformed friends, he said, “I want to preach this morning this a message entitled Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist should be a Pre-Millennialist.” I’m going to quote that sermon. I was there. In fact, I was on the board at the time when John was thinking about doing that message and I encouraged him along with others to do it.
He said this in that message. It is ironic that those who celebrate God’s sovereign grace of unilateral divine, unconditional and irrevocable election to Christians unashamedly deny the same for elect Israel. This is a strange division. For scripture teaches the perpetuity of the elect church to salvation glory, and in similar language, scripture affirms the perpetuity of ethnic Israel to a future salvation of a generation of Jews that will fulfill all the divine promises given to them by God.
In both cases, this is the work of and the result of divine sovereign election. Of all the people who could be pre-millennialist should be those who love sovereign election. Calvinists, Arminians make good millennialists because the two views are consistent. God relaxes and preserves no one. See Arminianism teaches that you can have salvation and lose it. I’ll tell you this, if you believe God’s done with Israel, you’re more of an Arminian than you are Calvinist and you’re less Protestant.
Here’s a second thought. The church has never called the New Israel in the New Testament, not once anywhere in the New Testament is Christian believers, Gentile believers called the New Israel. They go to a verse like Galatians 6:16 say, “But look at the Galatians are called the Israel of God.” That’s the Jewish believers in Galatia. They’re called the Israel of God because only Jews are part of Israel.
The church in Israel within history remains distinct. 1 Corinthians 10:32 talks about what? The Jew, the Gentile and the church. That’s how God sees the world. There’s the Jew and the Gentile, and then there’s the Jew and the Gentile and the church United in Christ. Study Acts and you’ll see this distinction like two parallel tracks for a train throughout the Book of Acts. The word “Israel” appears 20 times and the word “church” appears 19 times.
In fact, taking up this idea that nowhere is the church called Israel, John MacArthur says this in that same message why every self-respecting Calvinist should be a pre-millennialist. “The Bible calls God the God of Israel more than 200 times. There are more than 2,000 references to Israel in scripture with 73 New Testament uses of Israel. None of these references means anything other than national Israel.” This includes Romans 9:6 and Galatians 16, which are the only two passages that a millennialist referred to in their attempt to convince us that the two cancel out the 1998. However, these two passages can easily be interpreted as Jews who believe in Christ.
You get two debatable texts about whether the church is Israel. They’re going to cancel out the 1998 that refer to ethnic Israel. So, when you read about Israel in your New Testament, you read in about the Jewish people, the corporate entity that God set his love on and made promises to through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the fathers. They’re still beloved for the father’s sake. That’s the patriarchs.
Number three, the land promise to Abraham on his physical and ethnic descendants is unconditional. I want you to know that the Abrahamic covenant do you read about in Genesis 12, sorry, 1 to 3, Genesis 13:15, Genesis 15:7-21 and Genesis 17:8. It’s an unconditional covenant. How do we know that? Because if you go back into the Old Testament and into that history, remember we read our text historically, literally grammatically. When a covenant was being made between two parties, they cut an animal in half and they walked between the severed animal, the two parties making a blood covenant. They were going to keep their end of the bargain.
Read about God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. He put them to sleep and God alone walked between the animals in that sense. And God made a promise to Abraham the onus of which was on God to keep. In fact, we don’t have time to go down this path, but according to the Old Testament, Genesis 17:7 and Jeremiah 31:35, the nations forever. According to Genesis 15:18, “The land promised to the descendants of Abraham is forever.”
2 Samuel 7:16, God promised to King David and the people a king forever. In that same passage, 2 Samuel 7:16, a throne forever and finally in 2 Samuel 7:16, a kingdom forever. I can give you more verses should you need them. Go to your Old Testament. That nation that God said is love on that love is forever, and the land he gave has been promised as an everlasting possession and they have an everlasting king and a throne and a kingdom. That’s why when Jesus is leaving his disciples in Acts 1:6, ask what? Lord, when are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Because that’s a kingdom promise forever.
Quickly, here, I’ll try and get this in and wrap up. Number four, solid, consistent hermeneutics will not let you get away with literalizing the curses and spiritualizing the blessings of Deuteronomy, but that’s what theologians do. See Israel’s been set aside permanently because you see they disobeyed and according to the curses of Deuteronomy, God scatters them, God punishes them.
But it’s interesting according to their inconsistent hermeneutic that the same passage promises restoration to the nation in the land when Israel repents, but there is no room for repentance and all those blessings are now spiritual and it will be fulfilled in the church spiritually and if lands at all involved, it’ll simply be the new earth and the new heaven and the eternal state.
But just broadly speaking, I know it’s more complicated than that. I just find it fascinating. And I think I heard John MacArthur talk about this many years ago. It’s interesting that covenant theologians and replacement apologists will argue, “Hey, the curses are literal.” That’s why Israel is being set aside, but the blessings are not literal. They’re to be spiritualized. That’s inconsistent. That’s not rightly dividing the word of truth.
In fact, in his book, a staunch Calvinist, a classic Protestant in an Anglican JC Ryle in his book, Are You Ready for the End of Time? The Bishop of Liverpool, who was a premillennialist by the way, and a lover of the Jewish people, he said this about this audit quote, “Cultivate the habit of reading prophecy with the single eye to the literal meaning of its proper names. Cast aside the old traditional idea that Jacob and Israel and Judah and Jerusalem and Zion must always mean the Gentile church and that the predictions about the second advent are to be taken spiritually and the first advent predictions literally.”
Be just honest and fair. If you expect the Jews to take Isaiah 53, literally be sure to let them take Isaiah 54:60 and 62 literally also. The Protestant reformers were not perfect on no point I venture to say were they so much in wrong as their interpretation of Old Testament prophecy.
In fact, elsewhere in that book, he says this, it is high time for Christians to interpret unfulfilled prophecy by the light of prophecies already fulfilled. The curses on the Jews were brought to pass literally so also will be the blessings. The scattering was literal, so also will be the gathering. The pulling down of Zion was literal, so also will be the building up. The rejection of Israel was literal, so also will be the restoration. We have got into a vicious habit of taking all the promises spiritually and all the denunciations literally. That’s right.
We’ll stop there and pick this up next Sunday morning. But as we close, can I just encourage you to do three things in terms of not being conceited towards Israel? Let’s be those who love what God loves. I believe God loves Israel. Romans 11, they’re beloved. So, I want to love what God loves.
So, let’s pray. Let’s pray for the nation of Israel more consistent than we’re doing. Psalm 122:6, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for even in the church age as the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in that still there’ll be a remnant believing Jews who come to Christ with several of them in our church. It’s a joy to watch them come to faith in Christ.
Paul says his heart breaks and he cries continually for the salvation of his people. Romans 10:1. Number two, let’s promote the nation of Israel. Let’s defend her. Let’s speak up for her, not talking about being blind to her failures, but Genesis 12:3, I still believe that those who bless Israel God will bless. Those who curse to Israel, God will curse.
Look at seven and five of a Roman centurion. The word got to Jesus that he loves our nation. I want Jesus to know I love his nation because Jesus is a Jew and someday he’s going to return to his people. Let’s speak up. Let’s pray. Let’s provoke. Let’s evangelize. Romans 11:14 tells us to provoke them to jealousy. May they see God at work in you and me. May they see all the fulfillment of Old Testament scriptures alive in us through faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s live in such a manner. Let’s love them in such a way that we draw them to Christ.
We’re not ashamed of the gospel. It’s the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first. We should probably think about Jewish missions more than we do here at Kindred. Maybe take up a Jewish mission and begin to support it because I think sometimes we forget there’s that pattern in the Book of Acts, go to the Jew first. Pray for them. Provoke them. Love them.
Father, thank you for our time in the word. We don’t want to be ignorant of your purposes and plans for Israel. We don’t want to be conceited in our interpretation of their downfall. Lord, we thank you that their loss is our gain. We thank you for the church age. We thank you for the body of Christ. We thank you for the entity of the church.
During this time, there’s a fullness of Gentiles being brought in because of Israel’s failure to be a light to the Gentiles. But Lord, while we recognize that we are not blind to the partial and temporary nature of their blindness.
And our hearts are heavy for the spiritual state of the nation of Israel. We marvel at her survival. We marvel at her brain trust. We marvel at her deserts are blooming, but her people are perishing, without Christ.
And so, Lord help us to do all that we can to evangelize them and reach them and bring to them the hope of Jesus Christ. And yet we thank you that there will come a time after much heartache and horror that indeed the time lock will open the vault of heaven and you will bless them once again and save them all on a future day. This we pray and ask in Jesus’ name, amen.