Is God Through With the Jews? Part 2

“Is God Through With the Jews?”

Part 2

Romans 9-11

Given the current political climate and actions recently taken at the United Nations against the State of Israel, the question this article asks is important. In Part One, we saw the first of five proofs that God still has a place, purpose and ministry for His people, the Jews, and is actively carrying out His plan for them. If you missed Part One, you will first want to read it: Part 1

In our current broadcast series on the book of Romans, we arrived at chapters 9-11, where the apostle Paul addressed the subject of his fellow Jews and their standing with God. Like Paul had first done, as a group they rejected their Messiah, though many individuals placed their faith in Him and became the foundation of the Early Church. But a majority had not.

Two thousand years after rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ, is God really through with the Jews, as some are now teaching?

With 5 proofs in Romans 9-11, Paul asserts that indeed, God has not. Proof #1, as we examined in Part One, is the convicting power of God, still at work among His people. We now examine 4 additional proofs God has not abandoned the Jews.

PROOF #2 The Careful Preservation of God

Just as God preserved 7,000 Israelites in Elijah’s day who never bowed the knee to Baal, Romans 11:2 and following teaches He likewise has reserved a remnant in Israel by His grace.

‘Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.’ (9:27)

There has always been a remnant of believing Jews and there always will be, because God is the one who preserves Israel.

The Jews are not God’s chosen people because of their faithfulness and they won’t be rejected because of their unfaithfulness. God says the Jewish nation is indestructible. Psalm 89, one of the greatest passages in Scripture, in my estimation, bears this out:

27Also I will make him [David], my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. 28 My mercy will I keep with him for evermore and My covenant shall stand fast with him. 29His seed [descendants] also will I make to endure forever [note: forever]. And his throne, as the days of Heaven.

God goes on to say about David’s descendants,

30 “If his children forsake My law and walk not in My judgments” (and they did forsake God’s law), 31 “and if they break My statutes” (and they have broken His statutes), “and keep not My commandments” (and they have not kept them), God says, 32 “then will I visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes.”

God said He would take them to the woodshed. How that has happened over the last 2,000 years! Persecution and pogroms have pursued them wherever they went. But note an important “nevertheless” in v. 33:-37

33 “Nevertheless, My lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him nor suffer My faithfulness to fail. 34My covenant will I not break nor alter the thing that has gone out of My lips. 35Once have I sworn by My holiness and I will not lie to David. 36 His seed shall endure forever and his throne as the sun before Me. 37It shall be established forever as the moon and as a faithful witness in Heaven.”

Then He says, “Selah”—“pause and just ponder that.”

God says “I will” three times in this passage and “forever” twice. “I made a promise to David. If his descendants break My laws, they’re going to be punished, but I’m going to keep My Word.”

They would be disobedient, disbursed and discredited, but they would not be destroyed. Egypt’s king could not diminish them, the Red Sea could not drown them, Jonah’s whale could not digest them, the fiery furnace could not devour them, Haman’s gallows could not hang them, the nations of the world couldn’t assimilate them, and the world’s dictators cannot annihilate God’s ancient people, the Jews. His preserving power provides a remnant according to His grace.

PROOF #3 The Controlling Plan of God

Remember, Israel was not simply to be a reservoir into which God poured His blessings, but His pipeline through which He would disperse His blessings. God said to Abraham, “through you all the nations of the world shall be blessed.”

Romans 11 explains that when the Jews rejected their Messiah, God sent the Apostle Paul to the Gentiles, whose salvation, godly lives, the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the joy, love, faith, and victory they have in Him, would provoke His own people to jealousy. They would want that same relationship.

In verse 12 God reasons, “If I have prophesied that the Gentiles would be saved, how much more, then, will I keep My Word to Israel and bring them back to Me?” A fullness is coming for Israel. Romans teaches that God is doing all of this according to a magnificent plan. They fell away but they will be received. If He could take pagan Gentiles and bring them to Israel’s Messiah, how much more can He bring Israel to her own Messiah?

PROOF #4 The Continuing Promise of God

God made an unbreakable covenant with Abraham. If Abraham, the root, so to speak, of this race is His, then the whole tree is His. God will not break His covenant promise.

We who are Gentiles have simply been grafted in to this tree and entered into Israel’s blessings. If God can take unbelieving pagans and graft them to the true olive tree, Israel, He can bring His own people, in His time, back to their true Messiah.

PROOF #5 The Culminating Purpose of God

God’s culminating purpose is for both Jew and Gentile to be saved. In God’s mysterious plan, “25 Blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles [the Church] be come in.” If you want to get a blessing sometime, just study the “untils” in the Bible.

He’s going to do this…

• In His time. God is visiting the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name until the church is complete. When will that be? When will the last soul be saved? That number is known to God alone. When that last Gentile soul is saved, the Bible says that will be “the fullness of the Gentiles.”

• Through His Son. 26 And so all Israel shall be saved. As it is written, it shall come out of Zion, the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.”

Who is the Deliverer? Jesus. We covered this in Part One—that in Israel’s darkest hour, God will destroy all nations coming against Jerusalem and will pour upon the house of David and Jerusalem’s residents the spirit of grace and supplication. Then that marvelous moment occurs when “they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced.” (Zechariah 12:9). “In that day there shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness.” (Zechariah 13:1). What is that fountain? A fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins.

• According to His Word. “This is My covenant [unbreakable promise]… they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes” (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), “for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:27-29). God keeps His Word. God is not a liar. If God says He’s going to do it, He’s going to do it.

• By His grace (verses 30-36). Never get the idea that God only wants some people saved. God says, “All are unbelievers,” and “I want mercy upon all.” God is going to do this out of sheer grace. Remember Romans 11:6, “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.” The sovereign God is going to do this purely by His grace.

• For His glory. By the time Paul reaches the end of chapter 11, I can imagine him wiping his tears, throwing up his hands and saying, “Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.”

If you don’t understand predestination, election, and foreknowledge—neither do I. No one does. How do I know that? Because the Apostle Paul didn’t know. He says, “For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him and it should be recompensed unto him again? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen.”

When the Bible says, “Whosoever will may come,” “God wants to have mercy upon all,” “Christ died for the whole world,” believe it. Just say, “Who can understand the ways of God, the mind of God?”

• For His purpose. “So all Israel shall be saved.” This doesn’t mean every Jew will be saved; it means those who trust in Him are the true Israel.

God is not finished with the Jew. The same power that convicted Paul, will one day convict the Jews. The preservation of God that kept the remnant in Elijah’s day is preserving them today. In God’s incredible plan, although the Jews turned from Paul’s message, God sent him to the Gentiles, who got saved. The Jews are going to come back; a great number of them will be saved. God made a covenant with Abraham, the root of the tree. God will not break His covenant.

We are now living in the most exciting time in the history of God’s chosen people. All the prophecies concerning Israel, since the creation of the state of Israel, May 14-15, 1948, are being fulfilled. Over the past 60 years, God has time and again dramatically appeared in the life of His beloved nation and land. His prophetic promises are becoming reality.

According to the Word of God, three major events will occur in the end times prior to the Second Coming of the Messiah, the Son of David.

1. Re-establishment of the state of Israel and the land of Israel.

2. Regathering of the Jewish people from all over the world to the promised land.

3. Rebuilding of the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, on the same spot

   as the first and second temples.

My heart almost explodes when I think of Jewish people who will see Him and say, “What are those wounds in Your hands?” And the Lord Jesus will say, “These are they where I was wounded in the house of My friends.” And in that day there will be a fountain open for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for cleansing and for sin.

Is God through with the Jew? God forbid, and He’s not through with you, either.

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To hear this message in its entirety, with added information not included due to space limitations, please tune in to the radio broadcast of Love Worth Finding on Thursday and Friday, February 16 and 17, or any time afterward at http://www.lwf.org/broadcasts

You may also want to order this CD to have in your own library or to share with a friend. Call us at 1-800-274-5683 and ask for message #2070, “Is God Through With the Jews?”

For added teaching from the messages of Adrian Rogers concerning God’s plan for the Jews, the nation, and the land of Israel, see the e-book on our web site, “Israel and Bible Prophecy — What Does the Future Hold?”