Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 04 – October 1981

 

Israel Are A People Of Promise

 

Sermon by Rev. F. De Vries on Romans 9:6,7,8

Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-8 & Romans 2:17-29

 

Beloved in the Lord,

One of the most remarkable episodes in recent history is no doubt the return of the Israelis to Palestine. That is to say, we generally call it “the return”, but actually this is not a return at all. None of these Jews ever lived in Palestine, and the only tie they have with that small strip of land is a historical one.

Although nearly everyone will agree that the founding of this new nation of Israel is one of the modern day miracles, the opinions are sharply divided whether this is to be seen as a work of God, or of man; a fulfilment of the promise of the Scriptures, or just the fulfilment of the hopes and expectations of the much persecuted Jews of the world. For many of these new settlers of Palestine go there, not so much out of religious considerations, but in order to escape from the seemingly endless pogroms and persecutions.

As a matter of fact, the Jews are very divided themselves about the call to Canaan. The Agoudists, the orthodox Jews are not at all convinced that this was the time to go back to Palestine. They are still waiting for the Messiah to come, and to gather all the Jews, and not just part of them, together, to lead them back to the promised country. Furthermore they can see little consolation in the small piece of land, which would not cover more than a small part of Tasmania, especially when they remember the glorious days of David and Solomon, when they could really speak of an Israelite Empire.

But the Zionists, those Jews who believed that now was the time to go back, would not be denied. So we see in our time the birth of a new nation, which is, in a way, one of the oldest nations on earth. Many a book has been written about the significance of this miraculous happening. Theological and Biblical papers were and are presented which prove that this event is the fulfilment of God’s promise, or which prove that it cannot be the fulfilment of the old prophecies.

However, on one thing there is widespread agreement, namely that the new nation of Israel has posed a problem for the Christians, and is presenting a tremendous challenge to the Church. For if ever we speak of the missing sheep of the flock, then this is certainly in order when we speak of the Jews. And if there are any special ties to be found which connect the Church to a group which is as yet outside the realm of Christianity, then this is surely the case with the people of Israel.

The often criminal neglect of many Christians as far as the Jewish problem is concerned may be due, for a great deal, to ignorance.

And then not ignorance, lack of knowledge of the history of this people, but especially ignorance of the Bible. Both of Old and New Testament. For too often it is thought that the concepts, the ideas “Israel” and “Old Testament” are identical. That only the Old Testament is the book which concerns self with the birth, the history and the death of the people of Israel, while the New Testament maintains an indifferent silence about them.

But this is far from the truth. The New Testament, in many places concerns itself with the fate of the people of Israel. And Paul himself never forgets that he is a Jew, brought up and educated in the highest schools and the best traditions of his country and people.

And it may help us if we remember that our Lord Himself was a Jew, indeed that the very Church of Israel, saved by the sacrifice of Christ, renewed by the Holy Spirit, built upon the foundation of Himself the corner stone.

With this in mind we shall listen to God’s Word telling us something about Israel and the Israelites. And we shall see that ISRAEL ARE A PEOPLE OF PROMISE.

Let us go back a couple of verses where Paul speaks of “his brethren”, his kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites; to them belong the sonship, the glorious presence, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship service and the promises!” Or to say it in a few words, my brethren, the Israelites, who have the Word of God.

For that is what the Word of God consists of, of God’s Covenant and God’s Law, both fulfilled in and by Jesus Christ. And so we come to our text: “It is not as though the Word of God has taken no effect”, or “as if the Word of God has failed” or, “as if the Word of God fell short”. Indeed not. For although the people of Israel did have the Word of God, it is NOT the fault of the Word of God that they failed.

Anyway, this Word of God, this Promise of Salvation which we find in it, was obviously never meant for all the Israelites. Abraham received the promise, but Hagar and Ishmael did not share in it. The promise was renewed to Isaac, but his eldest son, Esau, had no part in it.

Indeed, the promise of the covenant is for those who fulfil the condition of the covenant, and that condition is Faith! God-given faith.

Without faith the Word of God becomes a story of persons, of morals and of history. But to the unbeliever, to the man without faith, it does not appear to be the Word of God. This does NOT mean that it IS not the Word of God. But you may compare it with a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, but you yourself are in a bad mood. You could not care less about the sun, about the flowers and the birds, about other people; indeed, you could not care less about anything at all. In your eyes this beautiful day is the dullest day of the year, and the splendid nature around you only spells wilderness and loneliness to you.

So it is with the Word of God. The man who hears it and reads it with a heart, opened by the Holy Spirit, will faithfully drink in the words of life, the promise of salvation.

But the Bible is full of men and of women who did not have this faith. They would not listen to God, to whom the Word of God was just an empty book, only telling them about their disobedience, reminding them of their forsaken duties, inviting them to come to Christ, but at the same time opening the gates of hell for unwilling, and unrepentant sinners.

These men are not only mentioned in the Old Testament, but they are even found in the immediate circle of our Lord Himself. While His own hometown rejected Him, His own disciple betrayed Him and His own people crucified Him.

Prophet after prophet had been bringing the Word of God to the people of Israel, but they were ignored, disbelieved, insulted and murdered. At last the Word of God came to the people of Israel in the Person of Jesus Christ. The covenant promise had arrived; the Messiah had been born. But it made no difference. NOT that that Word was not good enough, and NOT that the promise was not properly fulfilled, but Israel was not good enough, and Israel just was not Israel.

For the first word ‘Israel’ in vs.6 means the elect, the faithful remnant; the second word ‘Israel’ means the reprobate, the rejected and the rejecters, the unbelievers and hypocrites among the people of Israel. Israel were the people of the covenant, of the promise. But they were also the covenant breakers who did not believe in the promise.

Just as a Fascist could not be a true Dutchman, and just as a Communist cannot be a true Australian, so a non-believing Jew is not a true Jew, and does not belong to the people of Israel. When an Absalom murdered his brother, and tried to murder his father, he lost all right to call himself an Israelite, a member of the great people of David.

When Jeroboam and Ahab and the other wicked kings of Israel bowed down to the gods of the heathen, they forsook the God of their fathers, and threw away their birth right. When Judas betrayed his Master, and when the Roman popes had the faithful Protestants killed, neither had the right to call themselves Christians any longer.

And the Churches which persecuted the faithful and threw out the Word of God stopped being Church. But this does not mean that Israel was no longer Israel; that the Christians no longer existed; that the Church stopped being the Church.

For right throughout history God has called to Him faithful men and women, who did not bow their knees for Baal, who did not agree with the wicked Sanhedrin, with the evil high priests, who did not worship the Virgin Mary or the Roman Saints and idols. The Covenant did not become invalid, worthless because it was broken by man. And the Word of God did not lose its force because man did not listen to it any longer.

Ishmael or no Ishmael, the promise remained, for “In Isaac shall thy seed be called”. Isaac is the child of promise, the child of the covenant, the link from Abraham to Christ. Right from the beginning God has stated that NOT in the natural way would the promise be realized, would the son of Abraham become the Son of God, would David’s Son become David’s Lord. But to use the words of Prof. Greydanus: “It was the promise which caused the children to be born”. God would arrange everything in His way. Not the son of the servant, which was born in a human way, would inherit the rich covenant promise; but the Son of Sarah, born in a miraculous way, a supernatural way – Isaac would be the great seed of Abraham; he would be the bearer of the promise.

Right from the beginning it became clear that not all of Israel would be really Israel. When the first bearer of the name Israel, Jacob, obtained the birthright which was rejected by Esau, he became the living indication of what God wanted his people to be, faithful, believing, repentant. There are a few saints in the Bible who committed as many sins as Jacob did, and as such he certainly was not an example. But just like David, he believed, no matter how deeply he fell, no matter how badly he sinned. And this faith not only became the condition of the covenant, but its symbol as well.

Not in physical circumcision would the law be fulfilled, but by circumcision of the heart. “For”, as Paul puts it in Romans 2, “He is not a Jew who looks like one, but he is a Jew, who is one inwardly”. Jesus already told them, “You are not children of Abraham, for if you were, you would do the works of Abraham”. And we do not have to look far to know what the works of Abraham were: “Faith, unlimited faith!”

It means very little whether or not one is a physical descendant of Abraham. At the most it means more responsibility to descend from the Father of all believers. For not in flesh and in blood, but in faith and in gratitude does the Jew become Jew, and does the Gentile become Jew.

“For ye that in times past were Gentiles in the flesh are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God”. Israel may have failed God, but God certainly has not failed Israel, and if the children of Abraham and Isaac do not come to the feast of the wedding, then the servants will go out and call in the strangers from the street corners. After all, it is not so that Israel failed to exist, and that a new Israel had to be formed. The often made statement that the Church of today is the new, spiritual Israel is not quite correct. For Israel never stopped being Israel; it only received new members.

The prophets knew it already “A remnant shall be saved”. We find that in the days of our Lord the remnant of Israel remained faithful, faithful to the Word of God, faithful to the promise, faithful to the Messiah, to the Son of God. Yes, they were also faithful to their missionary task, the calling of the Gentiles.

The early Church was a Jewish Church, and all its members were Israelites. But they were the true Israelites, the remnant that would be saved. And from that remnant there went out a call to the heathen people around them. The Jewish missionaries covered fabulous distances in their efforts to bring the Word of God to the people, to those who did not know the God of Israel, but who were to be told of the wonderful salvation through the seed of David.

It is NOT so that Israel was dissolved into the new combined church, but while the greater part of the nation fell away from the Church, the surrounding people rushed in to take their places. The call went out, first to the Jews, but then to the Gentiles as well. “For to you is the promise, and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him”.

“To all that were afar off…..!” The gates of Jerusalem were opened wide to all those who were baptized into the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Does that mean that the nation of Israel stopped being a nation, but continued as a Church? The answer is ‘yes’.

For as a nation Israel had stood in a relation to God in which no other nation was ever placed; but all that time only a part of them enjoyed truly a spiritual relation to God. Only the Believers could ever be termed “Children of promise”. The nation which once was Israel stopped to exist and no amount of Jews going to Palestine shall ever bring this nation back.

Certainly, there is again a Jewish nation. Again there is a people which is called the people of Israel. Most of them are descendants from those who sold their birthright.

We, the Church of today, are the remnant, the ever growing remnant which would be saved. And as the continuation of the people of Abraham, David, and Jesus, we have a grave obligation to those who belong to the same flock, who still know their names, but who do not know their Father.

No two people are closer related than the Christian and the Jew. And yet, no two people stand further apart than the Christian and the Jew. Both are Israel. The baptized Christian, as the legal heir of the promise, as the true seed of Abraham, and the unbaptized Israeli, citizen of the land of their fathers, but no longer citizen of the Kingdom of God.

It must be terrible to be a stranger in your Father’s house…….! They still share the name, but no longer the inheritance. They still have the promise, but do not accept its fulfilment. They still read the law, but cannot keep it. They still sing the psalms, but do not understand their meaning.

Nation of Israel….. but no longer the Church of Israel. Is this the fulfilment of the promise of God? Could anyone seriously maintain that this ‘Legion of the Lost’, these fatherless orphans, these forlorn seekers are in anyway the fulfilment of God’s rich promises? God’s call goes out to Abraham, and to his seed, to the seed of the Church. But it also goes to those who are afar off, to those whom the Lord shall call.

That is their only hope. That must be our hope for the salvation of our lost brethren. And it must be our prayer as well. For it is good to see this persecuted people living in a free country at long last. But we can never really be happy for their sakes until the nation of Israel returns to the Church of Israel. Until the children of Abraham become children of Abraham’s God.

And what about us who pride ourselves upon being the true Israel, the real seed of Abraham? Let Israel’s history be a lesson to us. When we are baptized into the Christian Church, that is not a guarantee that we are and shall forever remain true members of the Covenant.

Certainly, the covenant promise is there….. for all those who are baptized into the name of the Triune God. But so is the condition, the condition of faith.

Israel received the promise, but did not meet its condition. And Israel, as a nation, failed. The Church which does not jealously guard that promise containing the Word of God, is also on its way to failure. God shall forever, from the beginning to the end of the world, gather and preserve a Church, chosen to everlasting life. And we confess that we are, and forever shall remain living members thereof.

May these words be spoken, not in idle boasting, not in reliance upon our own strength, but may we all confess with mouth and heart, each one and all together, in reliance upon God’s grace: “I believe a holy catholic Church, which is the communion of saints.”

Then in utter dependence upon God, with hearts open to His Word and Spirit, this Church shall be truly Israel, the bearer of the covenant promise, and our children shall be truly Abraham’s seed.

“Theirs is the Sonship. Theirs is the Covenant. Theirs is the Promise. Theirs is the Christ, He Who is God over all, blessed forever.”

Amen.