This week all three of our readings work together under a single theme. That theme is the question, “Is God for all people or just for Israel?”
In the Old Testament reading the question is answered quite readily. God is for all people, so long as they are willing to hear His Word and to follow His ways.
In the Gospel Jesus heals the daughter of a Canaanite woman, even though the Canaanites were the people whom God ordered Israel to destroy and they had failed at it. It was the Canaanite false gods such as Baal and Ashtoreh which had consistently captivated Israel and led them away from their true God. But Jesus has mercy on this woman, who is willing to accept even the sparsest of crumbs from Jesus’ table.
And in our Epistle, our main text for this message, we approach the problem from the other side. Now that we know God is for everyone else, is He still for Israel?
This question, what is God’s relationship to Israel, is one which has a lot of relevance even today. Many radio and television preachers, such as John Hagee and Jack Van Impe, even if they don’t mention this every time they preach, have a certain understanding of this question which colours everything they do. Their understanding is that the Jews are still bound to the old covenant and the sacrificial system, and that until this old system is restored, Jesus won’t return. This way of understanding the Scriptures lies behind Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of novels, as well. Some, like Hagee, even openly state, as I heard on a recent radio program, that they believe the Jewish nation has a different way of salvation than the Gentiles. These groups actively support the idea of the Jewish temple being rebuilt so that the red heifer can be sacrificed and the people of God made their own nation. There is a certain degree of desperation to this teaching these days, as well. It relies on the generation which sees the new Israel also seeing the old covenant restored. Israel has been re-established for over 60 years now, and the temple is no closer to being built. Indeed, with the Muslim Dome on the Rock standing in the place where the ancient temple was believed to be, there is no chance of it happening any time soon.
The problem comes in with an understanding of the Scriptures which teaches multiple ways of salvation. For the Scriptures teach only one way—through Jesus Christ and His death on the Cross. Even in the Old Testament, those who were saved were not saved by their works but by their faith in God and His promise that He would send the Messiah to save them. Jesus’ constant critique of the Pharisees was not that they didn’t know God’s Word, but that they put their faith in their works instead of in their God. Whether Old Testament or New, the reality of the salvation is that it comes by the same means for all who will be saved—faith in Christ, in the Messiah.
This is central to Paul’s argument in today’s epistle. Let’s re-read it at this time. “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God 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. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.”
God’s promise to Israel is still true. The covenant still stands. God has indeed given His people a land, made them a great nation, and blessed the whole world through them. The question is where this Israel is located. Is it all Israel—believing and unbelieving alike? A fellow I knew was a faithful Jew with regards to his practice, but, I discovered through regular conversation with him, didn’t believe in God as Creator or in any particularly personal involvement of God in his life. He’s part of Israel by heritage, but is he part of Israel by faith? Well, according to this passage, no. Conversely, someone who has no Jewish blood at all but who trusts in Jesus for salvation is not part of Israel by heritage but is, as Paul describes in some of the verses of chapter 11 which aren’t part of our reading for today, a branch grafted into the tree.
God doesn’t reject His people. That ties into the basic understanding of the Scriptures. If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. (2 Tim. 2:13) God doesn’t reject those whom He calls to be His own. The gifts and calling of God to Israel are irrevocable. God doesn’t go back on His Word. And whenever one of the Israelites by blood believes in Jesus as their Saviour, God’s promise to Israel continues to be fulfilled.
Paul saw his ministry as one of provoking the Israelites to jealousy, and the right kind of jealousy. The kind which the Lord Himself declares, that He is a jealous God. As Exodus 20 says, “I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Exod. 20:5-6) God wanted to be the only God for His people, and He was jealous to protect that relationship.
Paul knew that for the Jews to see the Gentiles believing in the true God should provoke some jealousy in return. After all, God was their God first. He had made the covenant with Abraham and confirmed it with Isaac and Jacob, He had called Moses from Egypt and rallied His people around Moses to bring them into their own land. It was not to any other nation than to Israel that the divine service in the tabernacle and later the temple was given; it was not to any other nation than to Israel that the patriarchs belonged. It was not to any other nation that God had given His promise of presence and blessing and comfort.
All of the blessings of God had come to a point in Jesus Christ. He is the blessing from which all other blessings flow. And the Jews of Paul’s day had missed it, and it was their rejection of this Jesus that led to His death on the Cross. Hence, Paul can say that their rejection means the reconciliation of the world. For it did. In God’s marvellous care and directing of the universe, He was able to use His people’s lack of faith and understanding in Him to work faith and blessing for all people. For in Jesus’ death on the cross we are given once and for all time all the salvation and blessings we could ever need. On that cross His shed blood washes away your sins. His sinless life is exchanged for your sin-filled life. He died to sin that you can live free from sin’s bondage, free to be God’s own son or daughter. However, this gives us no grounds for arrogance, that we believe in Christ and that so many of His own people, by virtue of the old covenant, do not. For it is God’s mercy alone that saves from condemnation, God’s mercy granted to those who believe in Christ for their salvation, that faith that comes through the Word of Christ.
In other words, it is the responsibility of Christians to get that Word out into our communities, to all who will hear it—regardless of nationality or background or current religious affiliation. You and I need to be faithful in hearing and speaking the Word of Christ so that the mercy of God can go out to more and more people. For God has connected His promises of salvation to His Word. God will indeed have mercy on those whom He wills, and He has given us the privilege of being ambassadors of His Word, carriers of His message in our lives. For the blessings of God are no longer just for Israel. They are for all. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor, far and near, there is no person on earth for whom Christ did not die to take away their sins. They simply need to hear of their Saviour that they too might believe.
If anything, and this is how the apostle Paul looks at it in this chapter, Jesus is the trunk of the tree and Israel form the natural branches. We are wild branches grafted in. Hear Romans 11:17-24: “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.” (Romans 11:17-24 ESV)
If we, then, who are not by nature part of the tree of the New Israel, God’s eternal kingdom, fit so well and can produce such fruit, how much greater a blessing it will be when those who were called to be God’s own people so many centuries ago repent of their stubbornness toward their Saviour and return to their true God! If anything, we should be doing the exact opposite of the TV evangelists who promote Israel restoring the old ways and instead bring God’s good news in Christ Jesus to Israel. Bring Jesus to them, that they might know their Saviour from sin and live the way God intended them to live.
Hear too the warning in these verses: we too can be cut off if we do not continue in His kindness. If we do not continue to hear God’s Word, if we do not continue to receive His gifts, we run the risk of being cut off, through our own wilful seeking of our own ways. But when we continue in His Word, in His kindness, then He will bless us and give to us all that we could ever need to continue as His people and to bring His goodness and kindness to others. God grant us His kindness today and always as we continue in His Word, part of His eternal Israel by faith! In Jesus, Amen.
Last updated August 2008 by the webmaster.