IS GOD FINISHED WITH ISRAEL YET? PART 2
This morning is Part 2 of a two-part study -- “Is God finished with Israel yet?” What does the Bible say? Last week in Part 1 we were reminded of God’s promises to Israel. When we say “Israel” we mean the Jews, the Jewish people. In the book of Genesis God told Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3). So then, the Israelites as they later became known, the Jews as a people group, were chosen by God for a specific purpose -- to be the conduit of His blessing to the world. Later on in Chapter 13, God promised to give Abraham and his descendants the land in which Abraham was dwelling (Genesis 13:14-15). Then in Chapter 17 we learn that the covenant promises to Abraham, which included the inheritance of the land, were passed down through his younger son Isaac rather than through Ishmael (Genesis 17:20-21). Therefore, based on what we read in the book of Genesis, the rightful heirs to the land we know today as Israel are the Jews. At least that is what the Bible indicates. So, that is [one of the reasons the United States] sides with Israel. We believe in [the preservation] of God’s chosen people in their land.
In Part 1, our focus was on Paul’s argument in the book of Romans. Paul talks a lot about God’s relationship with the Jews. In Chapter 2 Paul says that the Jews are spiritually separated from God, not for their immorality, but rather, because they failed to keep their own law. Their hearts were not right with God. All their religious practices did them no good. Romans Chapter 3 begins with the Jews asking Paul questions based on his indictment of them in Chapter 2. They ask, “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?” (Romans 3:1). Paul’s reply is that the Jews have a GREAT advantage. Paul, being a Jew himself, basically says, “We Jews have an advantage over everyone else. We have been “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). We have been given incredible insights. If we Jews would have just lived according to what we knew to be right, we would have received all those blessings that God promised us. See Deuteronomy. “BUT,” Paul says, in essence, “we did not do that.” The result of our disobedience is that “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you [the Jews]” (Romans 2:24).
So, you see, instead of the Jews being a conduit of blessing for God, they became a hindrance. They misunderstood their relationship with God and ignored their calling to be used by God to bless the nations. In effect, the Jews blocked the channel of God’s blessing to the world.
And that led to Paul’s argument in Romans Chapters 9 thru 11 where he discusses God’s relationship with Israel despite their failure.
Israel, having blocked the channel of God’s blessing is temporarily by-passed, is set aside for a while. It is only temporary. We will talk about that here in Part 2. But why did God do this?
Paul points out that the [reasons] why God is temporarily setting them aside, why He is by-passing them – there are several reasons that are talked about in these chapters. We looked at the first three [in Part 1]. I am just going to go back over them. First, God in His sovereignty designed it that way. God’s desire is for everyone to be saved, Jews and Gentiles alike. Not just the Jews. So, God had to find a way to reach the Gentiles. In the book of Acts, we see how God did this -- through the New Testament church.
Let me point out something -- Jesus Himself was a Jew. Paul was a Jew. Peter and the other apostles were all Jews. In fact, the earliest Christians all came from a Jewish background, right? So, despite Israel’s national rejection of Jesus, God used a remnant of the Jews to carry out His will.
The second point that Paul makes here in his argument about the temporary by-pass of Israel was because of Israel’s rejection of their own Messiah, of Jesus. While a remnant DID believe (we just mentioned that) and formed the early church, for the most part the nation of Israel rejected Jesus. To this very day, the orthodox Jews reject Jesus as their Messiah. Paul says that the Jews in his day “stumbled over” Jesus (Romans 9:32-33).
The third point that Paul makes in these chapters is that this happened because they did not follow God’s standard of righteousness, which is by faith. I need to point something out: it has always been that way. That is not just a New Testament teaching. For example (I could go many places), Genesis 15:6 states that Abraham “believed in the LORD; and [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” FAITH. The Jews, instead, tried to be justified by their own works, by keeping the Law.
So, the million-dollar question as we begin Part 2 this morning, does all this mean – since Israel, the Jewish people as a whole failed to fulfill their God-given purpose to be a channel of blessing – does this mean that God is finished with Israel? The fourth bullet point [on the PowerPoint slide] which we are going to focus on today is that God intends to keep His promises to Israel. He WILL keep His promises to the Jewish people.
So, that brings us to Romans Chapter 11. [It begins like this:] “I ask, then, has God rejected His people? By no means!” And then in v 2 he says, “God has NOT rejected His people whom He foreknew…” (Romans 11:1-2). So, there is your answer. This underscores what Paul said earlier in Romans Chapter 3: “What if some were unfaithful?” And Paul established that the Jews WERE unfaithful – “Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though everyone were a liar…” (Romans 3:3-4).
Just because Israel as a nation was unfaithful, does NOT mean that God will be unfaithful. God is true to His word. Paul's message in Romans is that Israel remains, as it always has, at the forefront of God's plan. God WILL keep His promises to Israel despite her unfaithfulness to Him. Nowhere in any of Paul’s letters does he say that God is finished with Israel and that the church took her place. [That] doctrine is just not supported biblically. He is always reminding his readers that God still has a plan for Israel.
Throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments [I could have gone to 100 scriptures. I just put a few up on the PowerPoint slide], God reiterates His promises to Israel. In the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25, Mark 13, and Luke 21). Jesus prophesied the end of Gentile civilization and He said that it is all intertwined with God's ultimate plan for redemption and restoration of His people Israel. It is a very interesting prophecy.
Then Daniel, he prophesied that there would be a lengthy period of time in history where God’s judgment would be on Israel, when they would reject their own Messiah. But at the end of the age God will deal with Israel nationally, restoring Jerusalem and bringing eternal righteousness to His people (Daniel 9). Most scholars believe he was talking about the church age that we are in right now.
Amos prophesied the restoration of Israel where God was going to restore the fortunes of His people and plant them back in their land (Amos 9).
God said the same thing through Ezekiel: “I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land” (Ezekiel 36:24). We have already seen the fulfillment of this with the return of the Jews to the land and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. When that happened in 1948 – this is really incredible – it ended 2,600 years of national displacement from the land that God had given them.
The rest of Ezekiel [Chapter 36] if you read on talks about more prophecies that have not happened yet. God says, “I will give you [My people Israel] a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:26-28). There is going to be a spiritual revival in Israel, perhaps in the very near future. What I want you to hear is this -- God is not finished with Israel yet.
Let’s talk a little bit about history, a little history lesson. But I want you to consider something before I go through all this. The very existence of the Jews as a people group today is an absolute miracle. Based on everything that has happened to them through the centuries (we will talk about a few of these here in a minute) there is no earthly explanation for why they still exist on the face of the earth. The fact that the Jews remain today is due to divine intervention. God has preserved them. Why? Well, we just talked about why. Because He has some promises He needs to fulfill to them. Just think about it. Three of Israel’s greatest enemies in the Old Testament, the Philistines, Midianites and Amalekites all vanished as a people group. But Israel, the Jews remain to this day.
So, I want you to think about everything that has happened to the Jewish people during those 2,600 years they were displaced from their land. From the fall of Israel and Judah in the 6th Century B.C. (we can read about that in 2 Kings, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians and the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians); from then to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. 2,600 years! A lot happened to them. So, we are going to recount some of their history…
From 586 B.C. to 70 A.D., under the control of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, the Jews remained pure. Despite being dominated by outside forces, they were able to maintain their racial identity.
In the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the Romans killed a million Jews nationwide. 100,000 fugitives were captured and sold into slavery. Many more died as gladiators in the games.
In 115 A.D., the Jews of Cyrene, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia revolted against Rome. So, there was another revolt of the Jews. That did not go well. They were suppressed, and under the Emperor Hadrian, the Romans destroyed 985 Jewish towns, and the historical record tells us they slew 580,000 men.
Skipping ahead centuries of persecution, we come to the crusades in 1096. The first crusade was launched to recapture the holy places from the Ottoman Turks. For whatever reason (I do not know what was in their head), the crusaders thought it desirable to kill the Jews in Europe before proceeding to fight the Turks. And they did. The second crusade in 1146 saw more killing of European Jews. I don’t know about you but whenever [I] hear about the crusades, [I] don’t hear that part.
Then you fast-forward to 1348. During the scourge of the Black Death, the charge was that the Jews had brought on the Black Death by poisoning the wells. They had to flee for their existence to Poland and Russia. That is why so many Jews have Polish and Russian backgrounds.
But all of this persecution, which went on for centuries, did not wipe out the Jews. They wanted to wipe them out, but they did not [succeed]. At the end of the 19th Century, a great Zionist movement began and slowly the Jews started moving back to Israel. By 1914 there were 90,000 Jews back in the land. Then by the 1930s that number had gone up to 300,000 that were living in the land.
And then you have World War II [and] the Holocaust. Hitler slaughtered six million Jews. He tried to wipe them out too. But that didn't stop them. They kept coming back to the land. And only a handful of years later – not that many years after [the death camps of] Auschwitz, the Jews, in 1948 became a nation again!
Like I said, it is an absolute miracle that the Jewish people have survived. And it is all because of God’s sovereign hand of protection preserving them and re-gathering them back into the land. Ultimately, God’s purpose and plan is to redeem them. God is not finished with Israel yet.
So, let’s get back to Romans Chapter 11… Paul says, “So, I ask, did they [Israel, the Jews] stumble [over Jesus] in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their [the Jews’] trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.” That is a fascinating statement at the end of v 11. God’s desires for the Gentiles all along was for them to be saved. He wanted to accomplish this through Israel, but that did not happen. So, God temporarily set Israel aside and circumvented them.
I had an example that I used last week in Part 1 of a river that gets blocked. This river is bringing water to a city and it gets blocked by a landslide or something. In order to get the water to that city, you have to do something, right? You have to engineer some alternate channel to go around this obstruction to get the water to the city. You have to either go around it or tunnel through it. I used that as an [illustration] of what God did as far as reaching the Gentiles. God, determined to save the Gentiles provided another channel. We mentioned that this was the New Testament church. See the book of Acts.
Now, all that being said, one could make the argument that the church owes its very existence to the unbelief of Israel. After all, it was their unbelief that brought God in direct contact with us Gentiles.
I am going to take you to Acts Chapter 13. This is Paul and Barnabas. They are on their first missionary journey. They are in Pisidian Antioch and they are speaking in a synagogue there. In that synagogue were both Jews and Gentiles. Mostly Jews, but there were some Gentiles that were in there as well. [Picking it up in v 46…]
“And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, ‘It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you [to the Jews, who were the majority in the synagogue]. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” [he is quoting Isaiah]. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”
The Gentiles in this synagogue that are listening to Paul, when they heard that, they were rejoicing. They were happy. So then, through Israel's stumbling, full salvation came to the Gentiles. That is what Paul is saying.
After this incident here, the Jews obviously are not happy with what Paul said. So, what they do is run Paul and Barnabas out of town. Read on in Chapter 13. And then the next town down the road [these same Jews stirred up a crowd] against Paul and almost killed him. So, they did not like what Paul said at all. He was very unpopular with the Jews with his message.
Back to Romans Chapter 11. That phrase at the end of v 11, “so as to make Israel jealous,” carries this idea (reference Act 13 which I just read): God wants to redeem Gentiles so that Gentiles will have the kind of relationship to God that will make the Jews jealous. That's the plan. “In time,” Paul says, “Israel will see what the Gentiles have gained, and what they, the Jews, by their unbelief, have lost. And then they will believe.” In other words, God will eventually bring Israel to salvation by showing them what they have been missing. That’s the idea.
I want you to hear this. This is very important… The salvation of the Jews is critical to God fulfilling His promises to them. Paul knows this. He knows the scriptures. He feels that the more successful his Gentile ministry is, the greater the prospect that some of his fellow Jews (who rejected the Gospel) will be saved. And some did. Just read the book of Acts. Even though Paul’s primary ministry was to the Gentiles, there were some Jews that were also getting saved. But mostly it was Gentiles.
So, Paul’s prayer for his fellow Jews, his heart, is this: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them [the Jews] is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). Paul’s calling was to the Gentiles, right? But his heart went out for the Jews. He said, “I would give up my own salvation if they could only be saved.” That is how much he wanted them to be saved.
Then Paul goes on from there and a big part of Chapter 10 is Paul presenting the Gospel. In fact, some of these verses we use whenever we are witnessing to people. Very familiar verses, like Romans 10 and v 9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” And then in v 13, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
In order for salvation to take place, however, the Gospel message must be presented. Which leads to his next statement in v 14: “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Well, the obvious answer to that is, “They won’t!” The preaching of the Gospel is critical and this was Paul’s calling. He was called to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, but one of the things you notice about Paul and his missionary journeys is that whenever he went to a new town, if that town had a synagogue, that is where he went first – because his heart was for the Jews. Invariably what would happen is the Jews might listen to him for a little while, but they would eventually kick him out. And then he would go preach to the Gentiles. We see that pattern all the way through [the book of] Acts. And so, that was Paul’s heart. He really wanted them to be saved.
But the sad reality for Paul in his day is that Israel, the Jews, by and large, had rejected the Gospel while the Gentiles had embraced it. Paul says that this was actually prophesied about in the Old Testament. “But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says [Moses is talking to his people], ‘I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry’” (Romans 10:19). That was predicted in Deuteronomy. Then in v 20, “Isaiah is so bold as to say, ‘I have been found by those who did not seek Me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for Me’” (Romans 10:20). Paul concludes in v 21 (this is God’s sentiment speaking through Isaiah): “All day long I have held out My hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (Romans 10:21). The consistent obstinance of Israel expressed by Moses, later by Isaiah and now by Paul was quite frustrating and very sad.
If you read Romans Chapter 11, there is this long section, v 11 to 24, where Paul states that the Jewish rejection of God’s salvation by faith made room for many Gentiles to be “grafted in” to the tree rooted in God’s covenant with Abraham. The analogy I used last week was that of a river getting blocked by a landslide. But Paul’s analogy here is a little bit different. He says that Israel is like a wild olive tree and we Gentiles are branches that get grafted into the tree. I want you to hear this -- God did NOT chop down the tree. The tree is alive and well. It is still there. We [Gentiles] get grafted in. The point is that God’s intent all along was to save us Gentiles. And this gets accomplished despite Israel’s national failure through a remnant of believing Jews, like Paul.
We know that God has a plan for His people Israel and that God’s plan involves the salvation and restoration of the Jewish people. While a remnant of Jews believed and responded to Jesus’s message and became the first preachers of the Gospel, most Jews did not believe. That was true in Paul’s day and it remains true today. But we know from scripture that the salvation of the Jews is critical to God fulfilling His promises to them. Paul knows this and he is optimistic. Why is he so optimistic? Well, it is based on scripture. I want you to listen to Paul’s words here in Romans Chapter 11 beginning in v 26. He says, “And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will banish ungodliness from Jacob’; ‘and this will ‘be My covenant with them when I take away their sins.’ As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:26-29). That means you cannot change them.
So, WHEN will this happen that Paul is talking about here in Romans 9 thru 11? When will this be fulfilled? Well. the Apostle John had a vision of this and he recorded it in Revelation Chapter 7…
“After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, UNTIL we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads’ [We know from Revelation that the sealing is talking about salvation]. And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:” (Revelation 7:1-4).
And then John then goes on to list 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel that are sealed: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.
So, apparently, there is going to be, during the Tribulation, a revival among the Jews. 144,000 Jewish people are going to be saved and they are going to become the evangelists during the Tribulation period. Now, as I read this, it seems pretty clear to me that many Jews are going to be saved during the Tribulation. What about the Gentiles? Will they also be saved or is their time up? Well, look at the next 2 verses…
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10). Who is the Lamb? It is Jesus, right?
Here we see a revival taking place among Gentiles. It says, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” How many? It does not say. No number is given. It simply says, “a great multitude.” The last revival recorded in scripture will be a Gentile revival and – hear me – God will use those Jewish converts that are mentioned in [the first part of Revelation] Chapter 7 to preach the message of salvation. Just like He used Jonah to preach in Nineveh. And He used Paul to preach to pagan Gentiles. Many will come to Christ in the final days as a result of the testimony of these 144,000 or so saved Jews.
When revival breaks out, there is a bold declaration of Jesus as Savior. These brand-new Tribulation saints praise the Lord Jesus with uninhibited, liberated voices. In an ironic twist, the very people that were so resistant to the Gospel, the Jews, become the ones that God uses in the last great revival of the world.
I read Romans 11:29 earlier. I like the way the New Living Translations says it: “For God’s gifts and His call can never be withdrawn.” In other words, God always keeps His promises.
We’ve read and studied the book of Revelation in here and we know how it all ends, don’t we? Jesus returns to earth and He sets up of His kingdom, an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem. And the key to the whole thing, the key that unlocks the door to all of this, is Israel's salvation. That is how I read Revelation. We can't have the kingdom until Israel gets saved.
I want to stop here and interject something I was thinking about as I was preparing this [lesson]. When I was at DTS (Dallas Theological Seminary), there was this great debate [in one of my classes] about what would have happened – it is one of those “what if” questions you can’t really ever answer but you like to think about it – what would have happened if, when Jesus came and preached (and He primarily preached to the Jewish people), if they had, as a nation, accepted Christ and made Him their King? Things would have been a lot different, I think, in history, right? But that did not happen. So, the things that happened in history ended up happening. But they [the Jewish people] have to get saved before Jesus sets up His millennial kingdom on earth. That is what has to happen. After that happens, of course, Jesus rules and reigns and the world is blessed as Jesus sits on His throne there in Jerusalem. Israel is saved, Satan is bound, universal righteousness reigns, there is peace and prosperity for 1,000 years. Then, from there you read the rest of [Revelation] and there is a new heaven and a new earth and we are ushered into eternal bliss on this new earth, right? And all of that (that we read at the end of the book of Revelation) awaits the salvation of Israel.
So, what is the application of this for us? Because we are Gentiles, right? What is the application for us, besides that we need to support Israel? Well, I want to make a personal application… I am glad that God is not finished with Israel yet because that means that, despite the sin in my own life, not being the man, the father, the husband, the friend, the brother, and even maybe the teacher that I need to be, even in all of that, GOD IS FAITHFUL.
I want to close on a positive note with this promise from Jesus, John Chapter 6… [Jesus says], “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:37-39).
What a promise! And God keeps His promises, right? To us and to Israel. Praise the Lord!