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Transcript 285D
Is Israel Still a Special Nation?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: As I understand it, you said that the people of Israel were nothing special. Is that correct?
HC: Yes. Insofar as the Biblical indication of any particular blessing on the nation of Israel, that is not found in the Bible, outside of the fact that there will continue to be a remnant chosen by grace from them, coming in right up until the end of time.
CALLER: Then would you please explain to me Deuteronomy 7:6, along with Exodus 19:5?
HC: The question is raised, How are we to understand Exodus 19:5 and Deuteronomy 7:6? Let's look at those, and see what they say.
In Exodus 19:5 God is speaking to Israel. And He says, "Now therefore, if you will obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My own possession among all people. For all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
And in Deuteronomy 7:6 we read: "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people, that the Lord set His love upon you and chose you. For you were the fewest of all people. But it is because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath which He swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt."
Okay. Now on the face of it, God is speaking to Israel, and telling them that they as a nation are God's peculiar possession. And, in a sense, they were. They were called out of Ur of the Chaldees, that is, Abraham, the beginning of the nation of Israel, was called out of Ur of the Chaldees. And God did deal very specially and uniquely and peculiarly with the nation of Israel.
But when we study the Bible, we find that God had in mind, in these promises, a far more magnificent nation and a much greater promise than that which allude only to the physical nation of Israel.
First of all, this is suggested in Exodus 19:5: "Now therefore, if you will obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My own possession, among all peoples. For all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
Now the fact is that Israel has never kept God's covenant. It has never obeyed His voice. It has repeatedly gone its own way. Even to the very present day, the nation of Israel does not obey the voice of God. It does not keep His covenant. It goes its own way. And so whatever physical suggestion that is offered in these statements, it is abrogated, it is set aside, it is broken, by the conduct of Israel itself.
But now notice the language of I Peter 2. In I Peter 2 we read some very interesting statements that relate to what we've just read. Now remember, in Exodus 19 it says, "You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. You are My own possession." Now in I Peter 2 God is speaking here about born again believers, in verse 4: "Come to Him, to that living stone rejected by men, but in God's sight chosen and precious, and like living stones, ye yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
And then He goes on in verse 7, where He talks about the literal nation of Israel: "To you therefore who believe [that is, who have placed their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ], He is precious. But for those who do not believe, the very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner, and a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall before they stumble, because they disobey the Word, as they were destined to do." And the nation of Israel was destined to stumble. And we can read that already beginning in Isaiah 6, where God says that He will give them the spirit of unbelief, and this will continue until the cities are without inhabitants, and so on.
And when Jesus cursed the fig tree, he said, "May there never come fruit upon you again." They were destined to stumble. But then He goes on in verse 9. And He's talking again about the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ: "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light."
In other words, God is quoting here from Exodus 19:6: "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." And He's speaking about any born again believer. God is showing us, therefore, that this promise that He is making to literal Israel actually finds its fulfillment in the body of Christ, because literal Israel never did relate to God the way that is called for in Exodus 19:5.
Israel as a nation has always gone its own way. But born again believers have obeyed His voice. They have been faithful to God, only because God has drawn us to Him, of course. And we of course are drawn from every nation, as well as the nation of Israel – a remnant chosen by grace from the nation of Israel.
And so these passages find their fulfillment in the body of Christ, in you and I. We are the true Israel. We are the Jews that God speaks about in Romans 2. We are the lost sheep of the house of Israel whom Christ came to seek and to save.
Once we see this, you see, then all kinds of scriptures begin to hang together God had in view, in His salvation program, a salvation that was far greater than any literal nation.