It Begins And Ends With Israel – Part 2

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On today's edition of Pathway to Victory. You see, ladies and gentlemen, just as God has made some unconditional promises to the believing Jews, he's made some unconditional promises to you and me that we bank on every day. The same God who can be trusted to keep his promises to Israel is the same God we are depending upon to keep his unconditional eternal promise to us. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, Genesis means the origin or the beginning. And in the Bible's very first book, the book of Genesis, we find plenty of beginnings. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shows us how the book of Genesis holds the origins of Bible prophecy. It all began with God's promise for Abraham's family. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.

Dr. Jeffress. Thanks, David. And welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Before we get started with today's message, I'm eager to remind you that in just a few weeks, Amy and I are hosting a once in a lifetime trip to Alaska, and it's not too late to join us. The Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska occurs June 15th through 22nd. Our staff and crew have prepared a week of fun and fellowship that's uniquely Christian.

And so while there's still space available, be sure to make your reservation by going to ptv.org. By now, perhaps you've heard all this month on Pathway to Victory. I'm pleased to present a special teaching series on the end times.

It's called Perfect Ending. I love this topic, and I know you do as well. As a pastor and Bible teacher, I've been researching the end times for decades, and I want to share those years of study with you. Not only through our teaching series here on Pathway to Victory, but also in the form of my bestselling book, Perfect Ending, Why Your Eternal Future Matters Today. In addition to the book, I'm also offering a companion guide called The End Times Illustrated. This exclusive 72 page full color book contains 18 original illustrated infographics and charts outlining God's prophetic timeline from Genesis to Revelation. Plus, I'm going to include my very popular Bible prophecy chart.

These three resources are yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Now, more details later, but right now it's time to take your Bible and turn not to Revelation, but to Genesis for the study I've titled It Begins and Ends with Israel. You know, if you want to understand the Bible, you want to understand Bible prophecy, the place to begin is not at the end in the book of Revelation.

It's not in the middle in Ezekiel and Daniel. If you want to understand the Bible and Bible prophecy, you start where? At the beginning. You start at the beginning of the book.

Now, that makes sense, doesn't it? Well, that's what we're going to do today as we launch into our series, Perfect Ending, Why Your Eternal Future Matters Today. The way to understand prophecy is to start at the beginning. So if you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to the book of Genesis.

In fact, the word Genesis literally means beginnings. And in Genesis, we find the beginning of everything. Now, God's rescue plan for man and his plan for the restoration of the entire world, all centered on one man. His name was Abraham. That's where the rescue plan began with this man called Abraham. And the remaining 39 chapters of Genesis have to do with Abraham and his descendants, the beginning of this plan of reconciliation. And so when we come to Genesis Chapter 12, we are introduced to Abraham and to the specific promise that God made to Abraham.

We call it the Abrahamic Covenant. It was the promise of redemption for mankind and for all of creation. God, out of his mercy, chose to save Abram, and he gave this command. Look at verse 1, Genesis Chapter 12. Then the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. Remember, whenever God gives a command, that command doesn't always make sense, but it is always accompanied by a promise. That was true for Abraham. And we find those promises that followed God's command in verses 1 to 3 of Genesis 12.

Look at it with me. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now, the promise to Abraham was a land and a blessing. Now quickly, I want you to look at three characteristics of this promise that are key to understanding Bible prophecy. First of all, I want you to notice that God's promise to Abraham was a literal promise. Now there was certainly a spiritual component to it as we saw just a few moments ago, but God was actually promising to Abraham an actual piece of real estate, an actual land that would be his forever.

How do I know that? Look at how Abraham responded to the promise, Genesis 12 verses 4 and 5. As soon as he received the promise, Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Now Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot his nephew, and all of their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abraham understood this was a literal promise. He said, family, it's time to pack up and move.

We're headed to this land. If he thought this was heaven, why would he have gone to all of this trouble? I mean, it was a big deal in Abraham's day to move someplace. I mean, if you wanted to move in Abraham's day, you didn't call up Mayflower or Daryl Flood Moving Company and say, hey, come pack me up, we're headed to Canaan.

It didn't work that way. You had to do it yourself. And notice, he had to pack up all the things he had accumulated in 75 years of living. Do you have a lot of junk around your house? Just recently, we cleaned out our garage.

Let me rephrase that. Recently, Amy cleaned out our garage. It was amazing the junk we had in there just over these last six years we'd accumulated. But Abraham had a lot of stuff. Why did he go to all that hassle of moving it himself? Because he was headed to a literal land. Yeah, he was looking for heaven too. Hebrews 11, 10 says he was looking for that city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. But even though he was looking for a heavenly home, that didn't negate the fact that he was also looking for an earthly home as well. Secondly, I want you to notice that this promise was eternal.

It wasn't just for a specified time. God said in Genesis 13, he reaffirmed, Abraham, this land is going to be yours forever. Look at Genesis 13 verses 14 and 15. And the Lord said to Abraham, after a lot had separated from him, now I want you to lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, from all the land which you see, I will give it to you and your descendants for how long? Forever. Let me tell you, forever is a long time.

We have a hard time as mortal beings understanding what eternity is like. I came across these words from author Henry Will and Van Loom who writes, high up in the north, in the land called Smithshod, there stands a rock. This rock is 100 miles high and 100 miles wide.

Once every 1,000 years, a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then only a single day of eternity will have gone by. Forever is a long time. God said to Abraham, this land is going to be yours and your believing descendants forever. It was a literal promise. It was an eternal promise thirdly and most significantly for Bible prophecy.

It is an unconditional promise. The fact is, many Christians will concede, yeah, God made a promise to Abraham. God intended for this promise to be fulfilled, but Israel, Abraham's descendants, messed up big time. They rebelled against God and they ultimately rejected Christ and because Israel has rejected Christ, the Abrahamic covenant has changed.

It's changed in two ways. First of all, the promises to Abraham have been transferred, these people say, from Israel to the church. And furthermore, these promises have not only been transferred from Israel to the church, they have been transformed from literal promises to figurative, symbolic promises.

And so they reinterpret the Abrahamic covenant. They say no longer is there a promise of a land to Israel, that's been changed. Now the promise of a land is the promise of heaven for the church. They'll say the promise of a Messiah who would be the forerunner of a great nation, that great nation of Israel no longer is going to exist. The nation of Israel has now become the church of Jesus Christ. And then they'll say, yeah, God did promise that a descendant of Abraham's and a descendant of David would sit on the throne in Israel and Jerusalem and rule over the world, but that's been changed and transferred to the church. Now that promise means Christ is going to rule on the throne of your heart in your life forever and ever.

Now what are we to say to that? It's true, as you read through the scripture, there were some conditional promises made to Israel. Over and over again, God promised Israel blessings and curses. Israel, if you follow my law, I'll bless you. If you disobey my law, I will curse you.

In fact, as Moses prepared the Israelites to enter the promised land, Canaan, we find these words in Deuteronomy 11 verses 26 to 28. God said, see, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding to you today, and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today by following other gods which you have not known. And all of Israel's history is a story of blessings and curses. When they followed God, they were blessed. When they disobeyed God, they were judged. They spent time in calamity and exile. That's all of Israel's history.

But here's one thing to remember. These blessings and curses came through Moses. The promise came through Abraham. Abraham lived 430 years before Moses. And what God is saying is the conditional promises I gave to Moses in no way whatsoever negate the unconditional promises that I made to Abraham.

Now let me illustrate that for you. After our first daughter was born, Julia, Amy and I went to our attorney to make out our will. And we made a decision at that time that we were going to leave our estate to our children upon our deaths. And we didn't know at that time how many children we would have. We sure didn't know what they were going to be like. But we made that decision.

That was an unconditional decision we made. We were going to leave our estate to our children, whoever and how many there were. Now as our girls were born and started to grow up and mature, we established our own list of blessings and curses around our house. If our girls obeyed what we told them to do, they were blessed by us. They got their allowance. If they disobeyed us, they forfeited their allowance and experienced other expressions of wrath from their parents. And so all the time they were in our home, Julia and Dorothy experienced their share of blessings and curses.

But you know what? It doesn't matter and didn't matter. Whatever they did and whatever temporary consequences they experienced, never once did it cause us to change our will. That was an unconditional promise we had made. They were our children and will be our children forever. And the promise of their inheritance has nothing to do with their actions.

It's nothing that can be changed. It's an irrevocable decision. Now that is exactly what God is saying. Listen to Galatians 3 verses 17 and 18. Paul is making the same argument about the unconditional nature of the Abrahamic covenant.

He's saying, what I'm saying is this, Galatians 3, 17 and 18. The law, that's the Mosaic law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant, a will if you will, previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise. But God is granted to Abraham by means of a promise. This promise of an inheritance was an irrevocable promise God made to Abraham 430 years before the law.

The law came along later. It was a temporary series of blessings and curses. But even though Israel disobeyed God, it in no way negated the promise that God had made to Abraham. By the way, that's what that passage is all about from Psalm 89. Listen to verses 30 to 37. God says, if his sons, that is the Israelites, forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes and the loss of their allowance. No, it doesn't say that, but that's what he's talking about.

The temporary consequences of disobedience. They're going to suffer, Israel, if they break my law. But look at verse 33. But I will not break off my loving kindness from Israel, nor deal falsely in my faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His descendants shall endure how long? Forever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established how long?

Forever, like the moon and the witness in the sky is faithful. Perhaps the greatest evidence of the unconditional nature of the Abrahamic covenant is in the way that covenant was ratified before Abraham. You know, before Abraham got very far, he wanted to make sure that God was going to keep his end of the bargain in this promise. He asked for a sign that God was going to keep this promise and that he hadn't misunderstood it.

And so in verse 8 of Genesis 15, Abraham asked, O Lord, how may I know that I'm going to possess this land, that you're going to keep your word? In Abraham's day, when two kings entered into a covenant with one another, a treaty, a contract, in order to ratify the contract, according to the custom of the day, they would take some animals. They would split the animals in two. They would place one half of the animal in one line, the other halves of the animal in another line, leaving a path in between the animal parts.

And then the two monarchs would walk side by side, each carrying a torch through the animal pieces. And as they did so, they were signifying that the covenant was depending upon each party keeping his end of the bargain. But that's how a covenant was ratified. That helps you understand God's command in verse 9 of Genesis 15. Abraham wanted to know, God, how can I depend upon you to keep your end of the bargain?

Look at what God said, verse 9. So God said to Abraham, bring me a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old female goat and a three-year-old ram and a turtledove and a young pigeon. And then he brought all of these to him and cut them in two and laid each one half opposite the other.

But he did not cut the birds. Now, normally, Abraham knew what was going on. He imagined that God was going to tell him, now that you cut the animal pieces, you get a torch, I'll get a torch, we'll walk through the animal pieces together to signify that this deal is really going to happen.

But notice in verse 12, God does something very strange next. Now, when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold, a terror and great darkness fell upon him. Abraham was put to sleep.

Verse 17, and it came about when the sun had set that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between the pieces. And that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. It wasn't Abraham and God who walked through those animal pieces together.

Abraham was over here asleep. It was God himself, God alone, who walked through those animal pieces, signifying that this promise, this covenant, had absolutely nothing to do with Abraham and Abraham's faithfulness. It had all to do with God and his faithfulness. This was an unconditional promise God made to Abraham, and to make sure nobody missed it. And the writer of Hebrews said in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 13, for when God made his promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself.

You say, Pastor, what does all this have to do with Bible prophecy? Simply this, God promised Israel a certain land. Since 1948, they've been a nation, they've been in the land, but they haven't been in all of the land yet. God has kept the nation of Israel. They've endured forever so far that God's not yet finished with Israel. Not all of elect Israel has yet been saved.

It's true that God sent a blessing to all the world through Jesus Christ, and that he rules in the hearts of individual believers. That's true, but he's not yet sitting on the throne of David in Jerusalem as God promised that he would one day. What I'm saying to you folks is, God still has some unfinished business here on planet earth. God is going to keep his promise to Abraham and Abraham's descendants, his unconditional promise. You say, well, that's wonderful, Pastor, but I'm not a Jew, so why should I care? Because we're going to see in the weeks ahead that Abrahamic covenant, although it was to Abraham and his believing descendants, it has ramifications for you and me as well. But even more importantly, the reason it is important for God to keep this promise to Israel is, it's our way of knowing that God is going to keep his promises to us as well. You see, ladies and gentlemen, just as God has made some unconditional promises to the believing Jews, he's made some unconditional promises to you and me that we bank on every day. In John 10, 28, Jesus said, I give eternal life to them and no man shall snatch them out of my hands. In Hebrews 7, 25, it says, In as much Christ is able to save forever those who come to God through him and he lives to make intercession for them. In Hebrews 13, 5, Jesus promised, I will never leave you, nor will I forsake you. The same God who can be trusted to keep his promises to Israel is the same God we are depending upon to keep his unconditional, eternal promise to us. If God changes this covenant with Israel, if God revokes this promise he made to Israel, how do we know he won't do the same to us? How do we know one day when we stand before him in judgment, how do we know God won't say to us, Well, you know, I told you one time I was going to save you by grace, but I've changed my mind. It's going to be on the basis of your works. And guess what?

You don't have enough. What's to keep God from doing that? It is the character of God himself.

Romans 11, 29 says, For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. And just as we can depend upon the character of God to secure the unconditional promises made to us, we can depend that God is going to keep his unconditional promise to Abraham and his descendants, a promise that has great ramifications for the world in the years ahead, as we'll see in this series, Perfect Ending. God always keeps his promises, and over the next few weeks we'll discover other great promises in the Bible that relate to Christ's second coming and our eternal future in heaven. At Pathway to Victory, it's our delight to open God's Word and reveal his perfect plan for the end times. And to help you learn more, I've created a robust collection of prophecy resources.

The first is my best-selling book, which served as the basis for our current study. My book, Perfect Ending, explains why Christians will not be left behind to experience the Great Tribulation, and you'll discover peace and assurance regarding how your story will end. And the next resource is an exclusive companion guide called The End Times Illustrated, a panorama of Bible prophecy from Genesis to Revelation. In this full-color reference tool, we start with the origins of the prophecies in the book of Genesis and trace them to their culmination in the book of Revelation. There's nothing quite like this book available anywhere today, and I'll send you a copy of The End Times Illustrated, along with my best-selling book, Perfect Ending, to say thanks for your generous gift to Pathway to Victory. But that's not all, because when you respond today, I'll also include the multifolded Bible prophecy chart.

This is one of the most popular and helpful resources ever produced by Pathway to Victory. David will repeat these details and give you our contact information as well. But first, let me say thank you in advance for your generous giving that makes this ministry possible not only on your local radio station, but on hundreds and hundreds of stations around the world. Together as financial partners, God is using our collective gifts to pierce the darkness with the light of His Word. David?

Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. You are invited to request a copy of the best-selling book, Perfect Ending, when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Plus, you'll receive the companion guide to Perfect Ending. It's called The End Times Illustrated. This 72-page, full-color book provides an illustrated look at 11 essential prophetic teachings such as the Rapture, the Tribulation, and the Second Coming of Christ. And it all includes 18 original infographics and charts to further increase your understanding of these important events. To request your copy, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org.

And when your gift is $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete Perfect Ending teaching series on CD and DVD. Again, call 866-999-2965 or visit online at ptv.org. You could send your request by mail. Simply write to P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.

Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, inviting you to join us again next time when Dr. Jeffress continues his study on the end times with a message called Getting the Big Picture. That's Friday here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory.