S. THE FUTURE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL
THE FUTURE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 11:24-29 11-2-54 The sermon tonight is the conclusion of the message begun this morning on the text in Rom 11:1 :
“I say then, hath God cast away his people?” Is God done with the children of Abraham? Is there no future for the Jewish nation? In the sermon tonight, there will be a lot of reading, a lot of quoting from God’s Word. But I’d like to take a moment to show you how the apostle Paul himself, when he preached and when he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, how very, very much he quoted and read from God’s Book.
Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36 a great parenthesis. From Rom 1:1-32, Rom 2:1-29, Rom 3:1-31, Rom 4:1-25, Rom 5:1-21, Rom 6:1-23, Rom 7:1-25, Rom 8:1-39, he’s talking about our salvation by faith. Then, in Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36, he is discussing the problem of Israel’s unbelief. And now, you just look: I shall follow them one right after another. You look how he quotes from the Bible. He quotes Gen 18:10, Gen 25:23, Mal 1:2-3 and Exo 33:19. He quotes Isa 19:16, Hos 2:23, Isa 10:22, Isa 28:22, Isa 1:9, Isa 8:14 and Isa 28:16.
He continues in Rom 10:1-21 : Deu 30:12-14, Isa 28:16, Joe 2:32, Isa 52:7, Isa 53:1, Psa 19:4, Deu 32:21, Isa 65:1 and Isa 65:2.
Then in Rom 11:1-36, he quotes 1Ki 19:10, 1Ki 19:18, Isa 29:10, Deu 29:4, Psa 69:22; Psa 23:1-6 and Num 15:19-21. He quotes Isa 59:20-21. He quotes Isaiah 40:13-14, Job 35:7 and Job 41:11. In this little section of chapters nine through eleven, he quotes that many times from the Holy Word. When a man preaches like the apostle preaches, he preaches God’s Book. When a man delivers a message like apostle Paul or the rest of these men of God-when he delivers a message-he will deliver a message from the Book.
They preach the Word, like the Lord Jesus himself did. There was placed in his hands the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and he found the place where he read, and then he read it and preached from the Book. So tonight, may I say as I said this morning: These are not my ideas. They are not concoctions or imaginations configured out of my brain. I’m just a voice: A preacher of the Word. And we are going through the Bible and these things are in the Book. This morning, we began with the Jewish nation, the Jewish people, in their unbelief. And the terrible trial and tribulation, the sorrows and tragedies, that have characterized those people of God all through the centuries and the millenniums. And now tonight, we speak of their future. Do they have a future? Has God cast away his people? The answer of Paul is: God forbid. God forbid. “God hath not cast away his people whom he foreknew.”
Then he says: “For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery lest you be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” And then when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, then “all Israel shall be saved. As it is written: There shall come out of Zion the deliverer and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.”
“For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, without change.” The covenants that God has made stand forever and the promises God hath made are never annulled. So we begin tonight looking at the covenant promises of God to His chosen people, Israel. The first covenant that we shall mention and the first promise is the promise of the Lord God to Israel that they shall have the land of Palestine forever and ever.
Now, we read from the Word, in Gen 17:7-8 : And the Lord God said to Abram: I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all of the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. That is the covenant. God called it a covenant that he made between Himself and Abraham and Abraham’s seed. Forever they were to have the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.
Now, look again at that same covenant in the twenty-third chapter of the prophet Jeremiah:
Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall upon reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days, Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.
Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say: The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt,
But, the Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land.
God says: “I have given that land to Israel forever and ever.” And God says in Jer 23:1-40 : “I shall gather them from all of the countries whither they are driven and they will dwell in their own land.” And once again in Eze 11:17 :
Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God: I will even gather you from the people, and assemble ye out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all of the detestable things thereof and all of the abominations thereof from thence. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh. That they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
“And I will give you the land of Israel.” That covenant was made with Abraham and with his seed forever and ever. And it was renewed by the prophets, in an unconditional categorical promise to the people of Abraham: the land of Palestine, forever, by an eternal covenant, witnessed to by God himself. The land of Palestine was given to the seed of Abraham for an everlasting covenant and everlasting possession. And God says in his Word that someday they shall be gathered into the land of Palestine. And they shall be there as a people collected from all of the nations of the earth and they shall have their own king to reign over them: King Jesus, the promised greater Son of David.
All right. Now let’s look at that covenant. We have just read the covenant of God to Israel, that the land was to be theirs forever. And, someday, they shall go there and it shall be theirs for a possession forever.
All right. God also says here’s the second covenant. God also says that the Hebrew people shall have a King over them, who shall reign forever, a greater Son of David.
Now, listen. In 2Sa 16:7, God made a covenant with David: “And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee. Thy throne shall be established forever.” That is the covenant that God made with David. He should have a Son that would sit upon his throne forever and ever.
Now we carry that covenant through. In Jeremiah, the prophet, Jer 33:1-26, I begin reading at Jer 33:20. Listen to it:
Thus saith the Lord: If you can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season;
Then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne.
If you can change day and night, then you can also change the covenant God made with David, that he would have a son to sit upon his throne.
Moreover, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying: Considerest thou not what these people have spoken, saying, The two families which the Lord had chosen, He hath even cast them off? Thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them.
Thus saith the Lord: If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth;
Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant; so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, For I will cause their captivity to return.
They will have a King over them. The King, the greater Son of David, and his throne will be established forever.
All right, we read again, this time in Amos, the Amo 9:11 and Amo 9:15 : In that day, I will raise up the tabernacle of David that has fallen, And close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old… And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.” That has never been fulfilled, like the rest hasn’t been fulfilled. God says they are to have a King. I will build up the tabernacle of David that has fallen: his throne. And I will send my people back to their land, and I will never pull them up again, but they are to abide there forever.
Now, once again, in Luk 1:1-80, when the angel Gabriel came to the virgin Mary, he said:
Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and he shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Oh, spiritualizing exegetes come along and say: “That promise made to Mary about that son she was to have. He is to sit on the throne of his father David forever. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob. Why, that’s the church.” Who ever heard of Jesus being the king of the church? Who ever heard, who ever read in God’s Book, of the church being the kingdom? David’s throne is to be set up in this earth. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of David, is to sit upon that throne.
Well, what about the Lord Jesus now? The Lord Jesus is not on the throne of David. Listen to Rev 3:21 : “And I also have overcome and am sat down with my father in his throne.” The Lord Jesus is seated with God the Father on the Father’s throne in heaven. But he is not on David’s throne. The house of David has been cast down. The children of Israel are scattered abroad. And the kingdom has not come. Any time anybody says: “You are now living in the millennium kingdom,” I say he ought to have his head examined. Brother, if this is the millennium, may the Lord help us. What have we to look forward to?
No, Sir. There is no King David’s throne in this world anywhere. And there’s not any king reigning on this earth that even approximates the Lord Jesus. In this world there is nothing but war and rumors of war: Fear by day and by night; sin everywhere and certain death for every man. And if you think that we’re living in a millennium kingdom, Brother, look around you. Read the paper and watch your own body grow old and senile and die.
No, Sir. No, No. There is yet to be, says the Holy Book-there is yet to be the great establishment of the kingdom of God in this earth and Christ shall reign personally and visibly. And His people shall be the first Christian nation, and, through them, all of the world is to be converted and will be saved. And that’s the millennium. But it isn’t now. It isn’t now.
Let me tell you how to tell whether the millennium has come or not. When somebody says: “We’re in the millennium,” go out to the graveyard. If our dead are still dead, Brother, we’re not in it. For the first thing that shall come to pass in the millennium is this: That the dead in Christ shall rest first. And if they are still down there in those graves, you are not in the millennium. You are still in the world of sin and of age and of death. And someday, God’s going to change that, he says.
Well, let’s go back now to what I was talking about. We’ve got lots of time tonight. I’m just not going to quit tonight. We are just going on. And you just seat yourself nice and quiet-like.
Preacher, when are all of these things to be? That’s what the disciples asked the Lord Jesus. In Acts 1:6 of the book of Acts, when the Lord was about to ascend into glory, the disciples came to the Lord Jesus, and they said: “Lord Jesus, you’re leaving, you’re going away. And the kingdom hasn’t come. Lord, what of the kingdom and what of Israel? Lord, wilt now at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?” Do you remember that question? Well, that question has to have an answer. What about the kingdom and what about Israel? And what about the Lord Messiah, King David’s greater Son. What about that?
Well, the Bible has a lot to say about it. I cannot tell you the time that it will come. The Lord Jesus said: “It is not for you to know the times of the seasons.” But I can tell you what the times and the seasons are like. And we are in them right now. We are living in an age of dispensation, a season. And we can look at it and God has told us how it is going to be. So we are going to do that tonight.
What is that future? What is that future? Now, all of these great prophecies, they all center around the Messiah. They all center around the greater Son of David, His coming. All of those prophecies center around the first coming of the Lord and the second coming of the Lord. In the first coming of the Lord-if we had just worlds of time tonight-in the first coming of the Lord, the prophets describe minutely how it would be.
Daniel even said the time of his first coming. And they described just exactly how he would be. He’s going to be born, said Micah, over there in that little town of Bethlehem. And he’s going to be brought up in Nazareth. And he’s going to be meek and lowly and humble. And the spirit of the Lord is going to be on him. And he’s going to love poor people. And he’s going to preach the gospel to the poor. And they said all through the book of Matthew, that it might be fulfilled. And they said he’s going to offer himself as the promised King of Israel-going to ride upon the ass. And he’s going to his house, his Temple, suddenly and immediately. And he’s going to be rejected by his people. And he’s going to be crucified between two malefactors. And he’s going to be buried in a rich man’s grave. And the third day, he’s going to rise from the dead. All of those things and a multitude of others that I haven’t time to mention-all of those things were prophesied hundreds and hundreds of years before the Lord Jesus came into this world.
Now, many of those prophecies concern the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Are you persuaded that the first prophecies, describing the first coming of the Lord, are fulfilled minutely, just like it says in the Book? But the second prophecies, those prophecies that concern the second coming, they are to be spiritualized away. They are not to be fulfilled.
No, Sir. They’re going to be fulfilled just like God said in that Book.
He prophesied the first coming of the Lord Jesus. And it happened just like the prophet said. And when the Lord Jesus comes again, it is going to happen just like the Lord Jesus said and as it was prophesied concerning him.
Now in the deliverance and in the restoration of Israel, there are three of them. All three restorations were by the hand and the intervention of Almighty God. The first time Israel was brought back to his land was out of Egyptian bondage and God did it. The second time that Israel was restored to the land was from the Babylonian captivity and again, the Lord did it. The third and the last time that the Lord intervenes to gather his people together and to send them back to Palestine will also be in the intervention and in the will and in the grace of Almighty God.
They, first, will go back, gradually gathering back in unbelief, as they are today. And some of these days, when the Lord Jesus appears, when he comes personally, they are going to be gathered from wherever they are. And they are going back to their land, this time converted, this time saved, this time the evangels and the preachers of grace and the love and the kingdom of the Son of God.
All right. Where does it say in God’s book that any such thing as that is ever going to happen? Then let’s read together. In the thirty-first chapter of the book of Jeremiah, listen to the prophecy of the prophet of God:
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they break, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days-in the end time-saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord. And I will forgive their iniquities and I will remember their sin no more.
Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea from the waves. The Lord of hosts is his name.
If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall cease from being a nation from before me forever.
Thus saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth stretched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord.
They’re going to abide-they are going to live-in the presence of the Lord forever. And they are going to be a converted and a new people. And everyone of them will know the Lord. For God will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more, and put His will and His law in the inward parts of their hearts.
All right. Look again. In the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Matthew, the Lord Jesus says:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent ubto me, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings and ye would not?
Behold your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth till you say: Blessed-blessed-is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
There is a day coming, says the Lord Jesus, when Israel shall look up and say to Jesus, their Christ, their Messiah, their King: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” And until that day says the Lord Jesus, all of the house of Israel shall be in desolation. They will be despised and scattered among the nations. But the time is coming-the time is coming-when they shall look up and say: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
Look again. Look again. In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Romans, Paul says: “Blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in; and then shall all Israel be saved.” All Israel is going to be saved when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.
Now, listen to the Lord Jesus: And when you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.
Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let them not enter into the countries or enter in there to. For these be the days that all things which may be fulfilled.
Woe unto them which are with child, and to them that give suck in those days, for there shall be a great distress in the land and harass upon this people.
I had a couple come to me who wanted to have a family and refused. Because she said to me, “It says in God’s word: “Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days for there shall be great distress and wrath upon the people.” And she said, “What if I were pregnant or what if my child were nursing and those days were to come?”
I said, “Oh, my dear child, listen. That prophecy concerns-that prophecy concerns-the terrible destruction of Jerusalem when the Lord Jesus said: Not a stone shall be left upon another in this vast and beautiful temple, but it shall be utterly destroyed. And when you see those armies gathered around Jerusalem, then flee Judea, flee Perea, flee to Lebanon, for there shall be awful tribulation in those days. And woe unto a mother who is pregnant and can hardly walk. And woe to a mother who is giving suck to a child and she can hardly run. And that is Jesus’ way of saying of those awful days.”
I said to that girl: “That isn’t now. That concerns that terrible day in the destruction of Jerusalem.” And I have a good ending to that. They had their baby and their family and they have been happy. I tell you when you read the Book, you need to read it with the enlightenment of God upon you.
Now I am going to continue. “There shall be distress in the land and wrath, and they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive in all nations.” That was literally fulfilled. And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. The prophecy of the Lord was what happened forty years after. Jerusalem is going to be destroyed and it will stay trodden down of the Gentiles. The Gentiles will possess it until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And when that time comes-“when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in”-“all Israel shall be saved.” That will be the sign of the coming of the Lord God. Did you know that this last war between Israel and the Jordan kingdom, the kingdom of Transjordania-did you know that there was a vigorous band of those Jewish soldiers that took Jerusalem, and had they taken it and kept it, the Lord Jesus Christ would have had to come or His Bible is not so? And his promises are not true.
But, what happened? The time has not come for the return of the Lord Jesus and the end and the consummation of the age, and nobody knows why. But that Jewish army retreated. And when the thing was finally settled, and the line of demarcation was made by the U.N., all of the city of Jerusalem, all of it is still in Gentile hands.
If the time ever comes when Jerusalem is given to the Jews, then the times of the Gentiles is done, and the Lord Jesus shall appear in glory and all of the final denouement of the age will begin, as it is written in the Revelation and these passages from the lips of our Savior in Luke and in Matthew.
Now, for a moment may I speak of the fullness of the Gentiles (Rom 11:25): “until the fullness of the Gentiles, and then shall all Israel be saved.” And then Jesus preaches the same thing. He says: “Jerusalem is to be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
What does that mean: “until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in and then shall all Israel be saved?” What that means is this: The plērōma of the Gentiles, the full number of the Gentiles. This is the day and the age of grace. This is the day of the preaching of the gospel. And there are an elect that are known to God: the plērōma. In Eph 1:23, Paul speaks of the plērōma, the body of Jesus, “the plērōma of him that filleth all in all.” The body of the Lord Jesus is now being made up, and it has in it a plērōma, a certain number known to God. And then, and in this age and in this grace, we are under the Great Commission of the Savior: “to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and all of the uttermost parts of the earth.” We are preaching the gospel of the Son of God. To what end? To convert the world? You will never convert the world. To make Christian nations? You will never make a Christian nation. You will never win one community completely to the Lord Jesus. You’ll not win all of Dallas.
But, we are preaching the gospel for the purpose of the Lord calling out his elect. He is calling out his people. And the church is called in Greek, a calling out. The ekklēsia, the church, is the elect assembly, the plerōma, the certain number that make up the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when the last one has come in, when the last one that is elected of God and that’s known but to God, when the plērōma of the Gentiles be come in, when the last one has been saved, then the fullness of the Gentiles is complete and the Lord Jesus shall come and “all Israel shall be saved.”
Now, a final word. The salvation of Israel, what will it be like? How is it? I am trying this evening to go over a part of the thing this evening that I wanted to present this morning and did. But, I had to do it rapidly. When the Lord Jesus is come, Zechariah-that is the prophet which I read out of this morning-Zechariah, and then Rev 1:1-20. Zechariah says that his feet are going to stand, they are going to touch the top of the Mount of Olives. And when his feet touch the mount, it is going to cleave up yonder-All of the things in the day when the Lord Jesus comes.
Then it goes ahead with those marvelous prophecies of the things that are going to come to pass. And among those things, Zechariah says, they’re going to be able to look upon Him-Israel is. Judah is-They are going to look upon Him whom they have pierced, and they are going to weep and they are going to cry and they are going to repent. And they are going to say: “Where did you get those wounds in your hands?” And He is going to say: “They came from you. They came from the house of my friends, My own people. I came unto my own and my own received me not. Like the Lord Jesus, in the Book of the Revelation, and He cometh with clouds: “Behold, he cometh in clouds and everybody will see him and they also which pierced him.” And Israel is going to weep before the Lord. They are going to repent before the Lord. They are going to cry before the Lord. And then shall come to pass those passages that I read in the prophets where it says: And a nation shall be born in a day-in a day-a nation shall be born in a day-in a day. Israel shall be converted overnight. It will be the first Christian nation. And you have many adumbrations of the future of Israel in the Revelation. Over here in Rev 7:1-17, in that terrible and awful tribulation after the church is taken away, there is sealed of Israel, of Judah, twelve thousand; of Reuben, twelve thousand; of Gad, twelve thousand; of Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin-all of the twelve tribes-there is sealed twelve thousand. And they are the emissaries and the preachers-after we are taken away-of the gospel of the Son of God. And look at the multitude that they win!