A Chosen People
The Rapture • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people.
26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.
Whatever one may believe, God’s Word repeatedly and unequivocally declares that Israel is His specially chosen people and that they will never lose that singular status.
Israel's unique destiny, ordained by God to fulfill His will for mankind, is the dominant theme of Bible prophecy. The prophecies concerning the Messiah are inextricably linked with His people, Israel. It was to Israel, and through her to the world, that the Messiah, Himself a Jew, was to come.
Therefore, a clear insight into the prophecies about Israel's past, present, and future is foundational to understanding Christ’s first advent and His promise to “Come again.” Israel, as we have already noted, is God’s prophetic timepiece, the great sign He has given to the world to prove His existence and demonstrate that He is in charge of history. Like it or not, the Jews are God's chosen people.
A chosen people? Chosen by God? That favor seems to have brought more than its share of troubles. In Fiddler on the Roof,
many a Jew's bewildered protest, "How about choosing somebody else!" Obviously, that plea won't change the facts. There is no escaping God's purpose or the biblical record.
Refusing to face the overwhelming evidence, skeptics contemptuously dismiss the very suggestion that there could be a special "chosen people." Atheists deny the existence of any God to do the choosing. Nevertheless, that biblical claim, even though widely rejected, has focused attention on the Jews.
In many cases, it has brought persecution from those who hate the Jews, as though they were the ones who conceived the idea that God had some special affection and plan for them.
Muslims, on the other hand, insist that it was not the descendants of Isaac but those of Ishmael who were chosen by God. Muhammad's Quraish tribe claimed to trace themselves back to Ishmael and through him to Abraham. Therefore, it is argued that the land of Israel (which Muslims insist was promised to Ishmael) belongs to the Arabs. This claim, however, is without any foundation. The Bible declares otherwise: that the land of Israel belongs to the descendants of Isaac. As for the Koran, it fails even to mention Jerusalem or any part of the land of Israel— an omission that is fatal to Islamic claims at this late date.
Five Distinguishing Characteristics of Israel
Let us take a closer look at this remarkable "chosen people."
There is no better place to start than the book of Genesis.
There, we meet a man named Abram, whom God chose and later renamed Abraham. Arabs (through Ishmael) and Jews (through Isaac) claim him as their father. In fact, there is no evidence that the Arabs are descended from Abraham through Ishmael. As Robert Morey has pointed out in his excellent book The Islamic Invasion: "The prestigious Encyclopedia of Islam traces the Arabs to non-Abrahamic origins." The evidence that Jews are Abraham's descendants, however, is overwhelming. Here is where the story begins:
1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
6 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
The five distinct elements in the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) set their descendants apart from all other peoples on the earth.
Here they are in the order in which they were given:
1) the promise that the Messiah would come to the world through Israel;
2) the promise of a particular land that was given to Israel as a possession forever;
3) the Mosaic law and its accompanying covenants of promise, which defined a special relationship between God and Israel;
4) the visible manifestation of God's presence among them;
and 5) the promised reign of the Messiah, on the throne of David in Jerusalem, over His chosen people and the entire world.
We will defer the first and last promises above, which pertain specifically to the Messiah, until later and deal with the others now. The verses quoted from Genesis 12 contain the first promise of a land to be given to Abram and his descendants after him.
The next few verses in that chapter record Abram's obedient departure from Ur of the Chaldees, the land of his nativity, where his family had lived in idolatry for many years after the dispersion of the builders of the Tower of Babel. Around the ruins of that Tower, the city of Babylon was built. It would become the capital of the First World Empire, the place of Israel's later captivity, and of great importance concerning Christ's return to this earth, as we shall see.
We very quickly find Abram arriving in "the land of Ca-naan." Its inhabitants were already known as Canaanites and possessed the land then.
This was the land that God identified to Abram as the land that his descendants would possess about 400 years later. Thus it became known :
"the promised land" and is still referred to as such. Th following are a sampling of God's many confirmations of the special promise concerning the land:
And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land... for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever.
I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.... Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not their's [Egypt], and shall serve them... But in the fourth generation, they shall come hither again.
In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt [in the Sinai desert] unto... the river Euphrates [and there follows a description of the exact territory]
(Genesis 12:7; 13:15; 15:7,13-16,18-21).
The same promise is repeated to Abraham's son, Isaac, on more than one occasion. For example: "For unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father... and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis
26:3-5). The twin promise of the land and the Messiah is repeated again to Jacob, whom God later named Israel: "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed... and in thy seed [i.e., the Messiah] shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 28:13,14).
God's Self-Identification
Linking His very name with these promises, the God of the Bible identifies Himself at least ten times as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (Exodus 3:15,16; 1 Chronicles 29:18; Matthew 22:32; Acts 3:13, etc.).
He revealed Himself as such to Moses at the burning bush. At the same time,
He gave Moses His name, "Yahweh," which means "I AM THAT I AM." He is the self-existent One whose existence depends upon no other and upon whom the existence of all else depends.
Jesus uses the fact that Yahweh is known as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" to argue for the resurrection:
But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matthew 22:31,32).
"God" is not a name but a generic term that could apply to any god. Therefore, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gives us His name. It is "Yahweh." Thus, He is distinguished from all the gods of the world's religions. Yahweh is definitely not Allah for many reasons. Their character is precisely the opposite. Yet the highest officials of the Roman Catholic Church—in Vatican II and elsewhere— declare that the God of the Muslims and of the Christians is one and the same. Even evangelicals, trying to be broadminded and ecumenical, are suggesting that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth!
evangelicals, trying to be broadminded and ecumenical, are suggesting that Muslims worship the same God as do Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Here again, we find clarification through an understanding of Israel's role. Allah is indeed not "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" but their sworn enemy who desires the extermination of their descendants! Allah is a proper name—a name that existed long before Muhammad invented the anti-Israel and anti-Christian religion of Islam. As we have already noted, Allah was the name of the moon god, represented by the chief idol in Mecca's Kaabah. Hence the symbol of the crescent moon. For all of Islam's rejection of idolatry, Allah had a long pre-Islamic history as a pagan god represented by an idol- certainly not the God of the Bible at all!
The gods of the heathen, represented by idols, are consistently and repeatedly denounced in the Bible, and those who worship them are condemned by Yahweh's prophets. Never is there the slightest hint or suggestion that any such god is or could be an unwitting representation of Yahweh. Indeed, Paul, as we've noted, declares that those who worship idols really worship the demons who identify themselves with them.
"Chosen" by an "Impartial" God?
Even among Christians, there is increasing controversy over whether Israel any longer has a special place in God's plans.
This controversy is accompanied by a growing rejection of the biblical teaching that the land of Israel belongs to the Jews.
Some argue that for God to choose Israel would mean that He was unfairly playing favorites. After all, the Bible says that God is "no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34
34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
Such impartiality on God's part was not quickly revealed to Peter, for the Jews (and the early Christians were all Jews) considered all Gentiles to be without hope under the law of Moses. It took miraculous signs to convince Peter that the gospel was not only for Jews but for the Gentiles also. Even many Christians today cannot believe that God loves every person equally and desires that all should be saved, though the Bible teaches it plainly: "For God so loved the world... who will have all men to be saved...
The Father sent the Son to be the world’s Savior” John 3: 16;
4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
How can God's impartiality be reconciled with the idea of a chosen people? God made it very clear on several occasions that it was not "respect of persons" that caused Him to choose Israel. He chose them despite their unworthiness and unattractiveness, not because He found them more appealing than other people. In fact, they were rebels who deserved nothing but judgment. It was these unworthy in whom He decided to demonstrate His love, grace, and mercy to the world. Listen as He speaks to Israel through His prophets:
7 The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:
8 But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 That this is a rebellious people, lying children, Children that will not hear the law of the Lord:
10 Which say to the seers, See not; And to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, Speak unto us smooth things, Prophesy deceits:
3 And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day.
God's Unsearchable Grace
The Bible repeatedly says that the Jews, like all mankind, are rebels who are unworthy of anything except judgment.
Even so, God blesses Israel by grace without any merit on her part because of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Moreover, this grace is made possible by the Messiah's redemptive death. The contradiction between the Bible and the Koran could not be clearer.
Although Allah is called "the Merciful Compassionate One," he is, in fact, compassionate only with a few, merciless with most, and has no basis for mercifully forgiving the sinner.
In contrast to the biblical gospel of God's grace, Islam's salvation is by works and is merited by keeping the law. The Koran has no concept of divine mercy and grace and the penalty for man's sin having been paid in full by the Redeemer.
The Koran declares that Muslims receive God's blessing, not by grace, but because they are worthy: "Ye are the best of Peoples, evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah" (Sura 3:110). This same verse goes on to call the Jews "perverted transgressors." Sura 4:52,53 calls the Jews the people "whom Allah hath cursed... [who] have no one to help [them]."
It is commonly argued today, even by evangelicals, that the return of millions of Jews to their land is merely a chance happening of history without any prophetic significance.
Surely God would not have brought the Jews back to Israel, it is argued, because they aren't worthy of it. A large percentage of them are atheists or agnostics and nearly all have rejected their Messiah. Many are humanists, materialists, New Agers.
Certainly, Israel has not always acted in perfect righteousness toward the Arab Palestinians or toward her neighbors.
With such a litany of sins to her credit stretching back to ancient times, how could Israel enjoy God's special blessing?
Grace and Promise
Israel's imperfections are beside the point. As the above verses and hundreds like them in the Bible attest, Israel has been rebellious from the beginning. Her present condition is nothing new. God has punished Israel for her sins. The worst punishment, however, lies ahead during the Great Tribulation, which will culminate in the battle of Armageddon. Yet the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remain and will be fulfilled by God's grace. If God’s blessing comes only to those worthy of it, then all mankind is doomed. Foras the Bible reminds us, "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23; 5:12
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
There is no way for a sinner to pay for his own sins. Even one violation of the law puts the lawbreaker in a hopeless condition before God. Keeping the law perfectly in the future (even if possible) could never make up for having broken the law even once. Obviously, there is no extra credit given for perfect compliance with every precept, for that is exactly what the law demands. Thus, good deeds can never obtain God's forgiveness for past sin.
The debt must be paid by One who is without sin and who can bear the judgment that the guilty deserve. Such is God's solution to evil— and to pay that debt was the primary mission of the Messiah. It was through His death for our sins that He judged and destroyed Satan. Hence, the good news of the gospel: "For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift from God" (Ephesians 2:8).
Part of God's punishment for Israel in the past was scattering her people throughout all nations. He is now bringing them back to their land in unprecedented numbers, not because they merit it but because of His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to do so. It has been a modern phenomenon far exceeding the original exodus of their ancestors from Egypt into the promised land.
A Promise for the "Last Days"
The recent collapse of communism and the shredding of the Iron Curtain have amazed the world in particular.
One major bonus has been the resultant astonishing flood of Jews pouring back into Israel by the hundreds of thousands from the former Soviet Union. This land only recently refused to allow them to leave.
What a sight it is to watch the daily influx of grateful immigrants arriving at Tel Aviv's Lod airport from all parts of the world, but especially from the northern land of Russia! Seeing many of them kiss the ground when they exit the plane, weeping for joy is profoundly moving.
An observer of this uniquely emotional scene who was familiar with the Hebrew prophets could not help but recall the promise God made 2500 years ago and which He said He would fulfill in the last days:
7 For thus saith the Lord; Sing with gladness for Jacob, And shout among the chief of the nations: Publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel.
8 Behold, I will bring them from the north country, And gather them from the coasts of the earth, And with them the blind and the lame, The woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: A great company shall return thither.
9 They shall come with weeping, And with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters In a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: For I am a father to Israel, And Ephraim is my firstborn.
10 Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, And declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, And keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.
11 For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, And ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.
12 Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, And shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, For wheat, and for wine, and for oil, And for the young of the flock and of the herd: And their soul shall be as a watered garden; And they shall not sorrow any more at all.
Why was this promise to be fulfilled in that period of time called "the last days"? The reason is apparent and of great importance to our subject. The Second Coming could not take place without Israel having become a nation once again in her own land—for it is to Israel that Christ returns amid Armageddon to rescue her from the enemies who are intent upon exterminating her.
How close are we to that day? The fulfillment at this particular time in history of the many ancient prophecies that immigrants would flood into Israel in the last days is a sign of the nearness of Christ's return.
Yahweh does not violate His promises. If He failed to keep His Word, whether to bring blessing or judgment, His character would be tarnished and His holy name dishonored.
As He often said through His prophets concerning His intention to bring Israel back into her land in the last days:
"I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake" (Ezekiel 36:22);
"Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (Isaiah 49:3).
What a great and convincing "sign" is Israel's return to her land after 2500 years! Today, in fulfillment of prophecy, the eyes of the world are upon that seemingly insignificant and tiny piece of arid real estate. She is, exactly as foretold, a "cup of trembling" for all nations—a trembling concerning what may happen there.
Can anyone honestly compare the prophecies concerning Israel with her history and remain an atheist? Or can anyone deny that Jesus Christ is the only Savior? His advent, prophesied by the same Spirit-inspired mouthpieces for God, is intimately connected to Israel and her tortured history of dispersion and return to her land. We will come back to that subject later.
The other great theme of biblical prophecy is the Messiah who was to come through and to Israel. Those specific and numerous prophecies concerning Christ's coming, and their amazement in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, provide conclusive identification of Jesus as the Christ. They also constitute a further irrefutable proof for the existence of the God who who inspired the Hebrew prophets.
