Dispensationalism: God Has Not Rejected His People Israel - Genesis Part 33

I want to begin today with a quote, and here it is.

You say, oh my gosh. That's a shocking quote. Who in the world would say something like that? I mean, Adolf Hitler? Stalin?

Ahmadinejad? Who would say something like that? Well, actually none of the above men said it. The man who actually said that was Martin Luther, the hero of the Protestant Reformation. And so you might ask, my gosh, how could a Christian, much less a Christian leader of that stature, how in the world could they make a statement like this? Well, folks, as we return to our verse by verse study of the book of Genesis, this is what we want to talk about today.

But before we do that, let's do a tiny bit of review. If you remember, in our last message, we saw in Genesis chapter 15 that God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham, in which God promised that he would give Abraham's descendants, the land of Canaan, as a permanent, eternal possession from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in modern day Iraq. And remember what an unconditional covenant means. It means that Abraham didn't have to do anything to make God's promise come true. Abraham's descendants didn't have to do anything to make God's promise come true. The fulfillment of this covenant was all on God, which means that the birth of the modern state of Israel in 1948, my friends, was not a coincidence. And it means that it was not an accident. And it means that it was not just a lucky break for the Jewish people. Rather, it was the fulfillment of God's unconditional, eternal, sovereign, unbreakable promise that he made to Abraham. Now, that's what we saw in our last message, but it left us with a question.

And the question was this. Well, but the Jewish people rejected their Messiah 2000 years ago. And because they rejected their Messiah, did they forfeit these covenants that God made with them?

And did the church inherit the covenants that God made with Israel, including the covenant to the promised land? Well, this is a very important question, and this is what we're going to talk about today. You know, every time the Holocaust is brought up and all of the horrific things that were done to the Jewish people during World War II, I think all of us shake our head a little bit in wonderment and go, how in the world could Hitler have talked to German people? These were educated people. These were civilized people.

These were modern people. How in the world could he have talked them into going along with what happened to the Jewish people? And friends, the answer to that and the answer to the first question we asked today, how could a Christian leader like Martin Luther say what he said about the Jewish people?

The answer to both of those questions is actually theological, and I want to explain that to you right now. In his book, Jesus and Israel, historian Jules Isaac said this, and I quote, he said, although German responsibility for the Holocaust was overwhelming, it was only a secondary responsibility. The real culprit, Isaac says, was the tradition of Christian anti-Semitism that had dominated Europe for centuries, just like we heard come out of the mouth of Martin Luther. Isaac goes on to say Christian anti-Semitism was the tree onto which Nazi anti-Semitism was grafted. You say Christian anti-Semitism, where did that come from? Well, friends, it came from 18 centuries of theology, 18 centuries of the church being committed to a particular theology called replacement theology.

You say, what is that? Well, let me explain. Replacement theology is the teaching that because the Jewish people rejected Jesus as their Messiah, God in turn rejected the Jewish people and condemned them as a race and canceled His covenants with them and gave their covenants to the church. In other words, the church replaced Israel as the special people of God. Do you understand now why it's called replacement theology? Good. Okay, very good.

But there's more to it. And therefore, because all of this is true, therefore replacement theology teaches that after their rejection of the Messiah, the Jews became nothing more than a group of contemptible, reprobate Christ killers who deserved every evil thing that they got. Now, for us as evangelical Christians today, this sounds very strange because evangelical Christianity here in America and evangelical Christianity around the world, I mean, we're the strongest supporters of the Jewish people on the face of the earth. We're the strongest supporters of the nation of Israel on the earth.

And so hearing language like this, we're like, you know, it like doesn't even compute hardly with us. Well, we need to go back now and do a little survey of church history to really get an understanding of how we ended up where we are today. So you ready for a little survey of church history?

All right, here we go. We're going to go all the way back to the Apostle Paul to start. The Apostle Paul in Romans 9, 10 and 11 gives us the biblical view, God's view of the status of the Jewish people after their rejection of Christ.

Here we go. Verse 1, Romans 11. I say then, Paul writes, that God has not rejected his people, has he?

Certainly not. For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, Paul says, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Verse 11, I say then, have the Jews stumbled that they should fall permanently?

Paul says, certainly not. Rather, by their transgression, by their rejection of Jesus, salvation has come to the Gentiles. That's great news for the Gentiles of the world, but the story doesn't stop there.

Paul goes on, verse 12. Now, if there, the Jews' transgression, resulted in riches for the world, how much more shall their, what's the next word? Restoration.

How much more shall their restoration result in? God's going to restore the Jewish people, Paul says. And verse 25 tells us when, for when the fullness of the Gentiles has come to pass, all Israel shall be saved.

So, what's the conclusion? Chapter 11, Romans, verse 28. From the standpoint of preaching the gospel, they, the Jews, are enemies for your sake.

Why? Because they oppose the preaching of the gospel, but from the standpoint of God's election, they are, what's the next word? Beloved. They are beloved. They are beloved for the sake of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. The point Paul's making is that God isn't through with the Jewish people yet.

They may be in widespread unbelief now, but one day God's going to gloriously restore them back to their rightful place at the center of God's plan for the ages. And why is God going to do this? Well, what did verse 28 say? It said because God's promises and God's covenants with them are irrevocable. And so in light of this, what was the Apostle Paul's attitude towards unbelieving Jewish people? Well, it was an attitude of love. It was an attitude of affection. It was an attitude of evangelistic passion for them. That's why he said in Romans 9, verse 3, Paul said, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and separated from Christ. Do you understand what he's saying?

How could anyone wish that? For the sake of my Jewish brethren, if they would come to Christ, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Now sadly, less than 100 years after the Apostle Paul wrote these words in Romans 9 through 11, the church abandoned Paul's teaching in favor of replacement theology which not only replaced Israel with the church, but listen, also replaced the love of the Jews that Paul had with contempt for the Jews.

Listen, Justin Martyr, 2nd century AD, he said, and I quote, we Christians are the true spiritual Israel, and we as Christians, not the Jews, shall inherit the Holy Land. Augustine, 4th century, the greatest and most influential theologian of his day, said, and I quote, the Jews have been cast off by God and have no further purpose in God's plan. And as a result of his theology, church leaders led pogroms, violent persecutions against Jews, all around the Roman world, including Alexandria, the largest Jewish community of the day, where they burned every synagogue to the ground, ran every Jew out of town, and they killed thousands of Jewish people.

These are church leaders. John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch, also 4th century, talking to the Jews, and he said, quote, it is because you killed Christ and stretched out your hand against the Lord that there is now for you no restoration, no mercy, and no defense. You have committed the ultimate transgression, which is why you are being punished now worse than even in the past, end of quote. And as you can imagine, pogroms broke out against the Jewish people then, too, with thousands being killed.

Let me just run through the rest of this very rapidly. In 324 AD, the Council of Nicaea declared the Jews to be an odious people. In 535, the Synod of Clermont forbid any Jew from holding public office in Europe. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council declared that all Jews must wear yellow badges. Does that sound familiar?

It should. That's exactly what the Nazis did. In 1267, the Synod of Breslau required all Jews to live in ghettos separated from the rest of European society. In 1095, the Crusaders massacred Jews by the tens of thousands on their way to the Holy Land. In 1290, Edward I banished all Jews from England. In 1394, Charles VI drove all Jews out of France.

And in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And also, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain threw every Jew out of Spain and began the inquisition during which the church executed thousands and thousands of Jews at the stake. Now, there was a moment in time when the church had the opportunity to reverse all of this. It came in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses and began the Protestant Reformation. There was a moment there when they could, under Martin Luther's leadership, the church could have made a break with replacement theology and returned to the biblical theology of Romans 9, 10, and 11.

But as we just saw, Martin Luther didn't go there. As a matter of fact, some of the most vitriolic and hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric ever penned by anybody came from the pen of Martin Luther. Historian Raoul Hilberg, in his book The Destruction of the European Jews, says this, and I quote. He said the anti-Jewish laws passed by the Third Reich all had clear precedent in church law. Indeed, he says, almost every anti-Semitic law in Nazi legislation came from laws passed by church councils and synods previously through the centuries, end of quote.

The point is that all Hitler did was take the replacement theology and its attitude towards the Jews that had been dominant in Europe for 18 centuries and carry it to its logical extreme in the Holocaust. And that's how he got people to go along with him. Now by the mercy of God, and I mean this, by the mercy of God, all of that began to change in the middle of the 19th century with a man named J.N. Darby.

J.N. Darby was the founder of the Plymouth Brethren Movement. And when he was a young man, he was very ill, he was confined to his bed, he began to read and study the Bible. He began to read the Bible literally, the way we believe it ought to be read.

He began to read it inherently, the way we believe it ought to be read. And after doing that, he concluded some things. Number one, he concluded that the promises God had made to the Jewish people in the Old Testament would be fulfilled to them and not the church. He concluded, number two, that the church is never actually mentioned in the Old Testament, but it's only a great parenthesis in the middle of God's past and God's future dealings with Israel. And finally, he concluded that the Jews had been temporarily placed off stage because of their rejection of Christ, but they were still God's timepiece, to use his word. And one day, the Jews would return to center stage in God's plan of the ages. Now, does all that sound familiar? Huh?

Well, it should. It's exactly what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 9, 10, and 11. And Darby came to these conclusions by studying the Bible, Romans 9, 10, and 11, and also by an in-depth study in the prophecy in Daniel chapter 9 of the 77s. You say, I never even heard of that prophecy. Well, I got great news for you. You're going to know about it now because we're going to look at it.

Yeah? Praise the Lord. All right, here we go. Daniel 9, verse 24. 70 groups of seven years, God says to Daniel, have been decreed for your people and your holy city.

Stop for a minute. Who is Daniel's people? The Jewish people. And what's Daniel's holy city? Jerusalem. Right. Friends, the point is that this prophecy deals specifically and exclusively with God's program for the Jewish people. The events of this prophecy have nothing to do with the church or with Christians or with the church age or with New York City or with London. All right. And that's so important because if we get that right, this whole prophecy unfolds and it is magnificent. So here we go. You are to know, God says to Daniel, that from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.

Stop. When was this? Well, remember Jerusalem was destroyed 586 B.C. by King Nebuchadnezzar and it wasn't rebuilt until Nehemiah. Nehemiah even tells us when he was given permission to rebuild Jerusalem. Nehemiah chapter two, verse one says it was in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes of Persia.

Now we know this date with certainty. It was 445 B.C. You can write that in the margin right next to verse 25 in your Bible. So this is when this begins, 445 B.C., OK, from that point until the Messiah, the prince, is cut off, is killed.

That's the end point. The crucifixion will be 69 groups of seven years. All right. Let's do some multiplication. Sixty-nine times seven is 483 years. But remember, Jewish people use lunar years, not solar years. So we have to convert this to solar years and it's 476 solar years. So now let's subtract. We know the two ends of this prophecy. 476 years is the end away from 445 B.C., which was the beginning. When we subtract, we get 32 A.D. because there's no year zero. So who claimed to be the Messiah and fulfilled all the signs and wonders that went with being the Messiah who died at 32 A.D.?

Who was that? It was the Lord Jesus Christ. Friends, this is the most accurate chronological prediction of the first coming of Jesus Christ anywhere in the Bible. And you must understand, this is why Jesus castigated and condemned the rabbis of Israel in his day so harshly because they knew this prophecy and they could multiply and they could subtract and therefore they should have known that the Messiah was coming right when the Lord Jesus Christ showed up. But they refused to believe in him.

And what's worse, they talked the entire nation of Israel into not believing in him. Tragic. Tragic. Okay, so that's 69 of these 70 groups of seven years. What happened to the 70th group, the 70th week of years? Well, here it comes.

Ready? Verse 27, Daniel 9. Then he will make a covenant with many for one week.

There it is. There's your 70th week. But in the middle of this week he will stop the sacrifices and offerings at the temple in Jerusalem and he will set up an abomination of desolation. You say, wow, Lon, that sounds so familiar.

Well, it should. In Matthew chapter 24 when the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, what are the signs of the ends of the age? Jesus said, when you see the abomination of desolation set up in the temple by the Antichrist, you better get out of dodge because the second coming of Christ is imminent. All right. And he will set up the abomination of desolation until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on him who makes this desolation.

So who is this he in this verse, in the 70th week? Well, let's play some Jeopardy. Want to play some Jeopardy? Yeah. Okay. Here we go.

Ready? Makes a worldwide covenant for seven years, breaks the covenant after three and a half years, lives at the time when the third Jewish temple is operating in Jerusalem, stops all sacrifices and offerings at this temple, sets up the abomination of desolation in a wing of this temple and is completely destroyed by God at the Battle of Armageddon just the way the Bible says. Who is the Antichrist?

Exactly. And so here in week number 70, we've suddenly jumped down the corridors of time and now we're in the tribulation period at the end of this age. Hey, did you ever wonder why the tribulation period was seven years and why it isn't 20 years or why it isn't four years? Friends, the answer is because it's the last group of seven years from Daniel's prophecy. And let's go back to J. N. Darby now.

J. N. Darby saw this. He understood that between the 69th week ending with the crucifixion and the 70th week beginning with the tribulation period and the Antichrist, there was a huge parenthesis in time during which Israel was not center stage in God's plan. But the Gentiles, the church was center stage. We know this today as the church age. Jesus called it in Luke 21 24, the time of the Gentiles beginning with the crucifixion, the end of Daniel's 69th week and ending with the rapture just before the tribulation period. And when that happens, when the church is taken out of the world, God's going to restore Israel just like Paul said and put them back into the centerpiece of his plan for the ages just the way Paul said and make them his central focus in dealing with mankind. Now, J. N. Darby called this theological system dispensationalism.

But it's not a new system. They're like, oh, J. N. Darby came up with a brand new theological system. No, he didn't. No, he didn't.

J. N. Darby went back 18 centuries to the theological system of the Book of Romans. Do you understand that? He went back to the theological system of the apostle Paul, who said every bit of this. Do we understand that? Yes, we understand that.

It's not something new. The church left the biblical position and for 18 centuries was away from the biblical position. And Darby just figured it out and took us back to the biblical position. Dr. Charles Ryrie of Dallas Seminary says the distinction between Israel and the church is the essence of dispensationalism and probably the most basic theological test of whether or not a person is a dispensationalist.

And since the middle 1800s, thanks to the ministry of J. N. Darby and Dwight L. Moody and Billy Sunday and Billy Graham and the Scofield Reference Bible and Dallas Theological Seminary and Moody Bible Institute and John MacArthur and many, many other people like that, dispensationalism has become the dominant theology of American evangelicalism. Thank God for that. And it has restored the Jewish people to the proper role in God's economy that replacement theology had stripped from them. You all still okay out there?

All right. So ready to summarize? What have we learned today? We've learned, number one, that dispensationalism represents a return to the biblical theology of Romans 9, 10 and 11. We've also seen that dispensationalism recognizes, number one, that God has not rejected the Jewish people but just moved them off stage for now. Number two, that currently we're in a parenthesis period in God's plan called the church age. But number three, that this is a temporary situation that one day the church age is going to end with the rapture and then God is going to restore the Jewish people to center stage and He will fulfill every promise He made to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to the Jewish people, including His promise to give them the promised land from the river Nile to the river Euphrates. And why is all of this going to happen?

Friends, Romans 11, 28, because the gifts and the calling of God to the Jewish people, they are irrevocable. Praise the Lord, huh? Amen.

Now, you can clap, we'll hurt you. Good. Now, it's time, that's as far as we're going to go today, but it's time to ask our most important question. You say, Lon, have you got time to ask so what? Friends, a sermon without so what is like peanut butter without jelly.

You understand what I'm saying to you? We got to do this. So are you ready? All right, come on now. Are you ready? All of you on the Internet, here we go now.

One, two, three. Oh, that felt good, didn't it? You say, Lon, dude, man, it's like drinking from a fire hose today and yet I don't understand what any of this has to do with me. I mean, Lon, I'm not even Jewish.

Well, friends, this has a lot to do with you and me. As followers of Christ, dispensationalism gives us an entirely different construct, a biblical construct as to how we are to regard and treat Jewish people. It means that if God has never rejected Jewish people, even though they rejected Christ, but God still holds them dear, then it's incumbent upon us as Christians to have the same attitude. To treat the Jewish people, Romans 11, 28, as beloved and Romans 9, 3, to have an evangelistic passion and to have a love for their souls, the same love and passion that the apostle Paul had and to reach out to them with the gospel. You say, well, Lon, I got a couple of reservations about doing that.

Okay, what are they? You say, well, number one, I'm a Gentile. You know, I think Jewish people are best reached by Jewish believers who, you know, listen, friend, it may shock you to know that most Jewish people who come to Christ don't come to Christ because a Jewish believer leads them to Christ but because a Gentile believer leads them to Christ. Bob Eckhart, the man that led me to Christ, was as Gentile as a pork barbecue sandwich, friends, and yet he led me to Christ. You say, all right, well, okay, but number two, I don't know all the right terminology to use with Jewish people. I mean, I know you're not supposed to talk about Jesus and you're supposed to call him Yeshua and you're not supposed to talk about converting.

I don't know all this right terminology. Listen here, friends, Bob Eckhart, who led me to Christ, used every wrong word known to man. He talked about Jesus and converting and becoming a Christian and getting baptized. He didn't use any right word, none.

They were all wrong. And yet here I am walking with Jesus over 40 years later. Look, listen, if the Holy Spirit is at work in that person's heart and in your heart, I don't care what words you use as long as they're biblical, God will get the job done in their heart.

Don't worry about the words you use. You say, all right, well, number three, you know, a Jewish person will eat me alive in talking about the Bible if we get into this. Friends, don't kid yourself. Jewish people don't know the Bible.

They don't. My dad, when I tried to share Christ with him one time, I said, Dad, I want to talk to you from Isaiah chapter 53. He said, I don't believe in the New Testament.

Okay. I said, Dad, Isaiah is in the Old Testament. He said, really?

I said, yeah, let me show you. And I had to prove to him it was in the Old Testament. If you know that Isaiah is in the Old Testament, you know more than my dad knew about the Bible. Most Jewish people don't know anything about the Bible. If you're an evangelical Christian, you know tons more than they do.

Don't you be intimidated by them. You say, yeah, Lon, but what about number four if I run into an exception? Who really does know something about the Bible? Well, you know what? Then stay on the one question that I don't care how much a Jewish person knows about the Bible that they can't answer. And that question is, do you know for certain what's going to happen to you after you die? Do you know for certain that you're going to heaven after you die?

Rabbinic Judaism has no answer for that. Don't you let them get you off on all kinds of trivial stuff. Stay on point. That is the weak link in the armor. Stay there. And besides, that's the key issue anyway, isn't it? Yeah. You say, all right, Lon, I've only got one more.

And that is what if the person that I try to share with just isn't interested and they don't want to talk about it. And they treat me kind of like, I don't know, rude. Well, get used to it.

It happens. I was flying back from Israel and when we landed here in New York, I was standing there at the belt waiting for my suitcase to come off. And just as my suitcase came off and started going around, this woman, right when it got to me, stepped in front of me and I lost my moment. You know how you lose your moment there at the belt?

And it went by and my moment was gone. And so I'm trying to chase this crazy thing down the belt. And finally, one nice Jewish man helped me and pulled it off the belt for me. So I thought, well, he did something nice for me. I should do something nice for him. So I went over to my briefcase, got a CD of my testimony, brought it over and said, sir, you did something very nice for me. I want to do something very nice for you. I want to give you this CD.

And it tells you about my life story, how I'm a Jewish person, but I believe in Jesus. And he looked at me and said, I don't want it. I said, yeah, I know you don't want it.

I said, but it can't possibly do you any harm just to listen to it. He said, I don't want it. I said, okay, it won't hurt you.

I don't want it. I said, okay, okay, okay. So I walked away and then I had to go around, you know, where you go through the customs guys, the guys with the blue uniforms on, you know, whatever. So I gave one to one of the custom guys and he said, see her over there pointing one of the other customs agents. He says, she really needs this. Give one to her. And I said, okay. So I gave one to her. In fact, there was five of them there.

I gave one to all five of them. And then I overheard him talking. She said, well, I go to church. And one of the other agents said, yeah, but it's about a whole lot more than about going to church. So they're all having this discussion, these five agents.

And up comes this Jewish man again. And I said to him, I said, hey, look, you see all those agents over there, they all took my CD and hadn't heard any of them. I said, come on, this is last chance, last call right here.

How about taking this from me? He said, I don't want it. I said, okay, I can take a hint. You know, fine. Off he went. He said, yeah, what if I run into one of them?

Well, number one, folks, at least we gave that person a fighting chance. And number two, don't forget, when the rapture of the church happens, there's going to be 144,000 Jewish people, your doctors, your dentists, your lawyers, who are going to look around and go, oh, my gosh, Susie was telling me the truth. Jesus really is who He said He is. And Revelation chapter 4 says they're going to come to Christ and they're going to be evangelists for the Lord in the beginning of the tribulation period. My point is it may not be what a Jewish person does with the gospel message right now.

It may be what they're going to do with it at some point in the future. But either way, it doesn't matter. Jewish people deserve to know the truth. And they need us to tell it to them. And I had a lady in the lobby come up to me and say, well, I could tell my Jewish friend the truth, but they might get mad and I might lose all relationship with him and never talk to me again.

I said, ma'am, let me ask you a question. Would you rather have your Jewish friend looking at you from hell and saying, you know, I broke relationship with you and I was mad at you, but at least you told me the truth. Or would you rather have them looking at you from hell and saying, I was six feet from your face and you didn't tell me what I needed to know to stay out of this place.

She said, yeah, okay, I got it. Friends, that's true for everybody. Jews and Gentiles alike. But it's particularly true of our Jewish friends. Let's bow our heads together. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, what I'd like you to do now is I'd like you to think of three Jewish people that you know and that you care about that don't know Christ.

Friends, acquaintances, relatives. And now what I'd like you to do is pray for them. That God would open up a door in their heart to listen to the Gospel. And now I'd like to ask you to ask God to give you the opportunity to share the Lord Jesus with these folks. To open up a door for you to talk to him about Christ. And finally, I want to challenge you right now to promise God that if he does, when he does, give you this opportunity. You may be scared and you may be nervous, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, you're going to grab it. Lord Jesus, we've just prayed for hundreds and thousands of Jewish people asking you to open a door in their heart to allow us to share Christ with them and to bring them to faith in the Lord Jesus.

And Father, I pray you would honor those prayers by giving us those opportunities and that we, even though we're scared and nervous, that we will step out trusting you by faith and take those opportunities. Now Lord, we know you love Gentiles and Jews the same. You don't love Jewish people more than you love anybody else. It's just that we as the church tend to be so intimidated about sharing with them and we shouldn't. So Lord Jesus, send us out into the streets of Washington to share with everybody, particularly to look for those chances to share with our Jewish friends, knowing that they are beloved by you and they should be beloved by us. And the greatest love we could ever show them is to tell them the truth about salvation in Jesus Christ. Lord, we look forward to there being hundreds and thousands of Jewish people in heaven forever because of the prayers that we offered sitting right here this afternoon. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. What did God's people say? What did you say? Amen. .