God’s Plan for Israel vs. Gentiles: Understanding the Abrahamic Covenant

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Good evening, it's good to have you all back with us. And once again, we're going to just turn right back to where we left off last week in Genesis chapter 12. Remember, we're talking quite extensively for the last few weeks, and probably will be for another week or two, on the Abrahamic covenant. And I've always maintained that the reason we've probably got so much confusion in Christendom tonight, is the fact that folk just cannot differentiate between what God has determined to do with the nation of Israel, and what He did after Israel rejected all that when He turned to the Gentile, aside from Israel. And we cannot begin to put these things together clearly unless we understand this Abrahamic covenant. And so, I make no apology for spending a good deal of time on it. So, if you'll turn with me back to Genesis chapter 12, where the covenant is located, and from there we'll just do a little bit of review of what we covered in our last program, and then we'll move on ahead. But in Genesis chapter 12, remember now in verse 2 and 3, we have the covenant, reminding you again that a covenant is always from God to man. Man has nothing to do with the covenant whatsoever. He may break it. He may do all kinds of things with it, but that does not destroy the covenant. The covenant is from God, and it is eternal. Nothing that man, or even the nation of Israel can do, can change that, that the covenant is forever. Now, here it is, where God says to Abram, before he becomes Abraham, I will make of thee a great nation. If you'll remember the last few weeks, we looked at all the references with regard to Israel becoming a nation of people, a separated nation, different from all the other peoples. I will make of thee a great nation. God says, I will bless thee, make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. Then verse 3, I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee. And then the all-encompassing part of this covenant is in the last part, and in thee shall all the earth be blessed. Now I emphasize that, because a lot of times I'm afraid people get the idea when I begin to teach the unique covenant role of Israel, that they may get the idea that I'm saying that God has forgotten about the non-Israelite. That is not the case. He's going to set aside the nation of Israel, deal with them, and many times when I put it on the board, in fact, maybe this is a good time to put it back on the board as we had before, that all the way from Adam until we get to Genesis 12, God has been dealing with one race of people, one race. And of course at the Tower of Babel we had the confusion of the tongues and the sorting into the various segments of the world population by virtue of Noah's three sons, but at Genesis 12 is where God now lets the main race of Adam just continue on like a river. And I guess I can just about put that, that this will be what we now refer to as the Gentile people or nations are going to continue on their way just like a mass river. I like to always associate it with the old Mississippi, as it just finds its way all the way to the Gulf. Then out of that polluted river of the one race of Adam, God is going to pull this one man Abram, and out of it will of course become the nation of Israel, or as we know them, the Jew, and He's going to deal with this nation peculiarly, particularly, and usually I even put it so far as Jew only, with exceptions. I think we had that on the board last time, didn't we? With exceptions. Now the reason I put it that way is from Genesis 12 all the way through our Old Testament everything here is God dealing with Israel, but there are exceptions. For example, He told Jonah to go where? To the Gentile city of Nineveh. Now if you know the story of Jonah, he didn't want to go, did he? Oh, he did everything to keep from going. Well, why not? Because you see, he was under this same impression that the God of Abraham was only dealing with the Jew, but he didn't recognize that a sovereign God can make exceptions, and so God tells Jonah, go and minister to the city of Nineveh, and Jonah says, there are enemies. I don't want to see Nineveh saved, but God says, I do, and so finally he forced the issue and Jonah got to Nineveh. We have the other one with the Syrian general Naaman, remember? Had leprosy, that was an exception, and we're going to see even when we get into the ministry of Christ, it's Jew only, but with a couple of exceptions. So keep this in mind as we look at this covenant process. But as we leave Genesis chapter 12, and as I pointed out, I think, in our last program as well, that this covenant is going to be a progressive revelation, and within that covenant, let's put them back up here again, we have the promise of a nation of people. We have the promise of a geographical area of land, and when you get people in a land, you're going to have to have a government. Now that is implicit, and yet it's dormant in this Abrahamic covenant. It's not all of a sudden all going to come on the scene at once, but the promises of God are so sure that as we move through the Old Testament, you're going to see all of God's dealing with this nation of Israel is to bring into fruition this covenant, where the nation of Israel will now be a nation of people, unique, separated, different from all the other nations. God's going to put them in a land that He will promise to them, and as we move on, if not in this half hour, in the next one, we'll move into chapter 15, and we'll see God actually deed that land promised to the man Abram, deed it according to the Oriental custom. And then as we're going to see in the next few moments, He's going to give the promise of a government, and that government will be headed up in their king, as we know him as the Messiah, as the very Son of God. All right, now for just a little bit of review with regard to the land then, just flip over with me to chapter 15, if you're in Genesis. And you'll notice in chapter 15, verse 7, And he said unto him, that is, God said to Abram, I am the Lord, or Jehovah, that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this, what, land, to inherit it. And then, of course, we'll see where God deeds it in short order. Then if you'll flip all the way over to Joshua, and this will be more or less on the way to our other references with regard to the king, if you'll go to Joshua chapter 1, we once again have the same promises, now not given to Abram, not even to Moses, but now further on to Joshua. Verse 2, and God says to Joshua, Moses my servant is dead, now therefore rise and go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the, what, unto the land, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Verse 3, every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given to Moses. Verse 4, here's the geographical outline. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even to the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea, that is the Mediterranean, until the going down of the sun shall be your coast, or borders. Now you see there, it's so clearly put that God is giving to this little nation of people a particular territory, a particular part of Old Terra Firma. Now it's so unfortunate that most of our mainline denominations tonight, officially, now I know, as most of you are aware, that some 80 % of most of the people in the pew are in opposition to the hierarchy of many of our denominations. But nevertheless, the hierarchy of our denominations, for the most part, are saying tonight that the present day Jew in Israel has nothing to do with the Jew of the Old Testament. Now you and I know better, but you see that's the problem when people become wise, as the Scripture says, in their own conceit. They lose sight of the very basic tenets of Scripture. The Jew in Israel tonight is the same Jew of the Bible. They haven't lost a thing. Over the years, most of my class people have heard me put it, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. He's still a Jew. And after almost 3,000 years of being out there amongst all the non-Jew people, a Jew is still a Jew. And I always remind people, look at America. We're only a little over 200 years old as a nation. How many Americans are still pure from their original nationality? Not very many. We've all intermarried to where there is no longer a pure Englishman or a pure German or a pure anything else. We've amalgamated, and the Jew never did. So always remember, this is what makes the Word of God particularly believable. As one has said, if there is any proof that this is the Word of God, it's the Jew. Because all the promises that God gave to this nation back here in Genesis 12 and on up through the Old Testament are still valid promises because the Jew is still a Jew. Now had he lost his national identification, then these promises couldn't hold. The Jew is gone, but he's not. He's still a Jew. And I think as we pointed out the last time we were together, there are something like 3.8 million Jews now living in Israel. And remember, they're coming in almost a thousand a day, at least they have been. But see, there are still at least that many in Russia, somewhere between 2 and 3 million. And then there's another million or two scattered in the other nations of the world, and then the largest Jewish community tonight is still in America, somewhere between 5 and 6 million. So there are still a lot of Jews that are going to have to find their way back to this promised land. But I want you to see that the Bible over and over depicts it as the land that God gave to the nation of Israel. And another thing that's hard for me to comprehend, and I think it is for you if you know your Bible at all, is how the nations of the world tonight can debate whether Israel has a right to exist. And you know they are. They are actually debating whether Israel has a right to be where she is. There's no room for debate. God has given it to them. Now granted, God over years, more than once in His sovereignty, took them out of the land, took the ten tribes of the north clear up into Assyria. Later on, He took the two tribes of the south out to Babylon for 70 years. But they came back, rebuilt the temple, and the nation of Israel was on the scene then for the coming of Christ the first time. Then when they rejected the Christ and they continued to reject all the overtures that Peter and the eleven made toward them, what, 70 A.D., 40 years after the crucifixion, once again God saw fit to take them out of the land, let their temple be ruined and destroyed, and they were dispersed. But according to His promises, what's He doing? He's bringing them back. And they're coming in from the, I might say, the four quarters of the world. All right, now if you'll turn with me all the way to Ezekiel. And we just got a couple more Scripture verses that we want to look with regard to God's promising them the land. And then we're going to look at the government, the promise of their king. But in Ezekiel chapter 37, this of course is the account of the dry bones, and we may have even looked at it last week. So we won't go through the whole prophecy here. But Ezekiel is given a vision, and the vision is a valley full of dry bones. They're well bleached, so they've been there a long, long time. And then Ezekiel is told to prophesy on those bones, and what happens? Oh, all of a sudden they come together, and there's a great shaking and a rattling right before Ezekiel's eyes. But remember, it's a vision. It's just simply a symbolic picture again that God is showing us. And then pretty soon the flesh comes upon them, and then the skin, and finally the breath comes into them in about verse 10 of Ezekiel 37, where he writes, So I prophesied as he commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet an exceeding great army. But now you go into verse 11, and then he said, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. See? Israel has been out there in the graves, which is what God refers to the Gentile nations. Israel out of the land is a nothing. Always remember this, Israel out of the land is without a temple, they're without a priesthood, they're without an altar. They are hopelessly out of touch with God when they are out of the land of promise. And so the Word of God refers to these habitations in the Gentile areas as graves. They're like a dead people so far as God is concerned. But he's bringing them back to life. How? By bringing them back to their promised land. Now if you'll come on into verse 12, Therefore God says to Ezekiel, Prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, O my people, I will open your graves, and I will bring you to the what? The land of Israel. See how plainly the Bible puts it? He's going to bring them back to their homeland. And then as you go on through the chapter, he's even going to make it so plain in the vision now of the two sticks, two broken pieces of sticks, and he tells Ezekiel, put them together end to end. The one stick will be for the northern kingdom, the ten tribes, the other stick will be for the southern kingdom, the two tribes, and he says put them together and it'll become one stick. All right, now if you'll come on up and pick this very thing up in verse 31, 21, I'm sorry, of Ezekiel 37. Now he's put the two sticks together and they've become one, and he says, And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen. I think most of you know that the word heathen in Scripture simply refers to the non-Jew. It doesn't refer to a pagan or someone who is out there steeped in idolatry. A heathen is simply a non-Jew. We usually refer to them now as Gentiles. All right, go on. I will take the children of Israel from among the non-Gentile, or the non-Jew, the Gentile, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them, where? To their own land. Now there's no room for argument. It's so plain. And I will make them, verse 22, one nation, in the land, upon the mountains of Israel. And then here comes the promise of a coming government. And one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided any more at all. Well, that should be enough references with regard to the promise of a land. Now if we'll go and look at the third part of this covenant, the promise of a government. Now turn with me to 2 Samuel. Now Samuel is back there in the books of history, and that's right after Judges, just ahead of Kings, I think, or Chronicles, Kings. 2 Samuel, chapter 7. 2 Samuel, chapter 7. And always, as you study on your own, and I trust that's what people do once I get them interested in Bible study, is I want you to study on your own. That's the only reason I teach. You all know by now that I'm not trying to build a clientele or a following. All I want people to do is get into the book, study it, and it's really not that difficult. But always establish the setting for a particular set of verses. Now here we have God speaking to King David, but through the prophet Nathan. And so Nathan, as he addresses King David, says in the words of God, beginning with verse 14, I will be his father. Now, of course, he's talking to Solomon, or of Solomon, but it goes beyond Solomon. We're talking about the whole nation of Israel in her future role. And so he says, I will be his father, and he shall be my son. And here's the conditions. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men. In other words, God would use other nations to come in and punish the nation of Israel, and with the stripes of the children of men. And then verse 15, what's that first word in verse 15? But. But. Now, what does that word always do? Well, it does the flip side. If they are disobedient, God's going to bring in other nations, downtrod them, maybe even disperse them, but in spite of all that God may have to do in disciplining Israel, watch that promise, my mercy shall not depart from them. Now, that's another teaching that is so abroad amongst most of our Christendom, Catholic and Protestant as well, that when Israel rejected their Messiah and crucified him, that God did away with all these promises of Israel and gave them to the new Israel, the church. Well, that's man's idea. That is not what the book teaches. The book says so plainly, regardless of what Israel does, God says, my mercy shall not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And again, remember Saul is merely used here as an example. And now verse 16, here comes the promise of a government that is going to rule over this little nation within its geographical area. And what does it say? Thy house, that is the royal house, the royal line, thy house and thy, what's the word? Kingdom. Kingdom. How many times have some of you heard me say, just like I do with the word Jew, the kingdom is the kingdom is the kingdom is the kingdom. Whenever you see the word kingdom in Scripture, unless the text definitely shows otherwise, it's referring to this kingdom that's going to come as a result of this Abrahamic covenant. It's the kingdom that's going to be basically over the nation of Israel, who are then in their promised land and with the government that all of Scripture is pointing to when their Messiah will be their king and the Messiah has to be of the lineage of David. And we'll look at that in a little further down the line. So he says, thy house, and that's where we get the term, the house of David. It's a royal house. It's a royal kingly line out of which the king finally came. So thy house and thy kingdom shall be established, how long? Forever. See, that's why we know that God is looking further than just the little kingdom of Israel under David and under Solomon. This is the beginning of eternity's promises. Now, the other thing I always want you to remember is that even though this earthly kingdom is promised here to Israel, the book of Revelation puts a time limit on it of a thousand years and consequently we refer to it always as the millennium. And it is a definitive period of time, but that thousand year reign of Christ is merely the introduction for the eternal setting. Because you get to Revelation chapter 21 and what do we have? A new heaven and a new earth. And this whole kingdom economy will just move right on into eternity. And that's why I think most people, after they've been in my teaching for a little while, get a whole, I think, better concept of what heaven is going to be. I told one of my classes the other night, when I was young, it used to almost scare me to death that heaven would get boring. My, who wants to just sit someplace on a cloud and strum a harp and do nothing but shout hallelujah or holy, holy, holy, and that will certainly be part of it. But eternity is going to be a viable exercise. Eternity is going to be a place of intense activity, albeit without all of the problems and the tribulations and the sorrows and the things that we've got now. But don't ever look at heaven as someplace that's just going to be, as I looked at it, something boring and monotonous. It's going to be quite the opposite. So this kingdom now promised to King David, which Solomon, of course, would extend, but it would be interrupted, but over a period of time this kingdom will become a viable reality. God, the Son, the Messiah will become the King, and it's going to be a glorious kingdom. Well, now our time is already nearly gone, so let's just look at maybe one or two more references. Turn to Psalms, if you will. Let's go to Psalms 89. I'm trying to take these in a chronological order so you can see, and this is by no means all of the references. This is only a sampling. In Psalms 89, you'll drop down to verse 36 and 37, and this is probably as far as we're going to get in this half hour. But here the psalmist writes in chapter 89, verse 36 and 37, His seed, and of course you've got to glance up to verse 35, David, His seed shall endure, how long, forever. And His throne as the sun before me, how long is that, forever. And then verse 37, it shall be established forever as the moon and as a faithful witness in heaven. That's this coming kingdom. Now you say, what's that got to do with me? Well, by the time we get to Paul, Paul writes and John writes in Revelation that when this kingdom is finally set up, you and I as church age believers are going to be a part and parcel of that kingdom by ruling and reigning with Him, that is with Christ. And so it is important that we understand this kingdom that is still going to be coming on the scene. Well our time is up. We'll have to pick it up next week. I'll see you then.