Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Throughout history, the Jews have been known as God's chosen people. So does that mean God has a special plan for them? Can they be saved without acknowledging Jesus as their Messiah? We'll find out today here on Focal Point.

Dave Drewry: Welcome to a special edition of Focal Point. I'm Dave Drewry. Well, we've hit the pause button on our current series, like we do at the end of every week, so we can sit down with Pastor Mike Fabarez and ask him some relevant listener questions.

And today we're turning our attention to our Jewish friends. Israel has been a regular feature in world headlines, especially in recent months. And many Christians have been wondering, where does this special nation fit into God's plan? Right now, let's join J. Wharton, executive director of Focal Point, to begin today's conversation. Jay?

J. Wharton: Thank you, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike, and Pastor Mike, Israel has been in the news a bit recently, and we had a question from a listener about Israel, and the listener asks, does God have a plan for Israel?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Yes, of course. I mean, you can't read the Bible without seeing Israel on just about every page. Literally, you can see thousands of references to Israel and what God does in the Old Testament in setting up a nation that he calls Israel based on a series of promises or covenants that he makes, beginning with Abraham, to set this one nation apart for himself.

So obviously the left side of our Bible is full of references to Israel and the establishment of a nation, putting them in a land, giving them a promise regarding a king. The Bible is replete with information about Israel.

J. Wharton: So when Christ comes on the scene, does God change the relationship with Israel? And how do New Testament Christians fit in there?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Well, clearly there is a change. There's a change from our perspective in seeing, as it says in the book of Romans, these Gentiles grafted in, or as it was promised in the Old Testament, that there would be the times of the Gentiles that would prevail for the season we're living in now.

From a New Testament perspective, that's described as this one new man that is created in this new work that God is doing in the church, where you have Jew and Gentile making up a new organization that God is working in presently. So it does change things in terms of how God is working out his promises, but it doesn't nullify the promises that God made to Israel.

J. Wharton: You'll hear people today talk about the New Testament church as replacing Israel. Why do they come to that?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: They see that because they see the promises that are made to Abraham and his descendants having a fulfillment in the church. There's no doubt that that's the case. The giving of the spirit, for instance, the promises in the book of Jeremiah and Ezekiel regarding what God would do in latter times and pouring out his spirit upon the people that we see in the book of Acts.

The book of Acts isn't just about Jews who are now getting the Spirit of God indwelling in them, moving them from the inside to keep God's laws. All of that spills into the Gentile church, and of course the mantle is taken up from Peter to Paul, and we see all these Gentiles experiencing the fulfillment of many things that were promised to the Old Testament Jews.

So that's why you can come to the conclusion, or some do, that the church must then replace Israel. That's not my view because the Bible says more than just that the Gentiles will be blessed through the promises of Abraham. The Bible in the same books that we quote regarding what God is doing in the church presently, that overlaps with what God had promised to Israel, he also makes very clear that the nation of Israel itself is not going to go away, that his promises are faithful.

As it says in the book of Romans in chapter 11, his call is irrevocable. And while there is a grafting in of the nations into this root that is sustained by the promises to Israel, there's going to be a time when all Israel is saved. You'll have a re-embracing of the Jewish Messiah by the nation of Israel in the end time.

J. Wharton: Well, what's going on currently with Israel right now in terms of God's plan for them?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Clearly there are many things we see going on in the world today that would need to take place if God were to keep his promises, as I believe he will, to the nation of Israel in bringing them together, putting them in the land, and having them embrace their Messiah in the events that are spelled out for us in the book of Revelation.

Think of the book of Revelation even having this picture of the 144,000 that he describes, 12,000 of each being from the 12 tribes of Israel. Clearly we have a reference to a national Israel in the book of Revelation, which in my mind corresponds to what's taking place in Romans chapter 10 and 11, this assembling of the nation of Israel together to have its Messiah come back and be the savior of those people and to establish an earthly kingdom.

It's like the question in Acts chapter 1, when Peter and the rest of the apostles asked Jesus, is now the time you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Jesus didn't say, well, you got it all wrong, we're not going to restore the kingdom to Israel. He said, no, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons.

So this coming of the fulfillment of Israel's promises, not just the spiritual benefits of having the spirit of God and the forgiveness of sins, but the establishment of the kingdom where this perfected Davidic king sits on a throne ruling over Israel, is postponed until a time at the end when God is going to bring together all those promises and I believe literally provide the fulfillment of those in something we call the millennial kingdom.

J. Wharton: Maybe you could speak to Romans 11 where God talks about a partial blindness coming on Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. How does that relate?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I think the real telling thing in that verse is the partial hardening of Israel has taken place until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. In other words, until the full church is established with every repentant sinner that God has called to himself in their place in the church, well then that hardening that we've seen, the partial hardening because of course there are some converted Jewish Christians today, ethnic Jewish Christians, then that partial hardening will go away.

In other words, there will be, as that passage so clearly says, a restoration of the people of Israel. Their hearts will be opened to the Messiah of the New Testament and they will be saved. By and large, that final generation of Israelites will be saved and the hardening will be removed.

J. Wharton: Then what should our relationship as non-Jewish Christians be towards Israel?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: That's a great question. I do think there should be an interest that we have in seeing the welfare of Israel, not to a fault. I don't think we give Israel a pass for everything that they want to do or if whatever they do becomes abusive or unjust. But we certainly pray for the peace of Israel.

We support the fact that God has set his promises that are irrevocable on the people of Israel. We respect them for that and we count them beloved because of the promises to the patriarchs. That's the wording of the apostle Paul in the book of Romans. We want to be a friend to Israel because of the good promises that God has laid upon them and will one day fulfill in a complete and in a literal way. So we need to be praying for Israel. We need to be supportive of Israel.

J. Wharton: Thank you, Pastor Mike. I trust this has been an enlightening discussion for our listeners. And we're going to continue this conversation with a message you gave called Modern Israel and Our Jewish Messiah.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Israel. Israel, the Israelites. Those words seem like they're on every other page of the Bible. Actually, it's more than that. If you were to do a search on those words, you'd find they occur some 2,604 times in your Bible. Israel. And if you add some nicknames for the nation of Israel, Ephraim, Jacob, those kinds of words that refer to Israel throughout the prophets, you'll find that the word count goes up to 4,000.

You say, well, of course, Mike. I mean, what do you expect? It's an ancient book about an ancient nation and of course you're going to find references to Israel all throughout the Bible. Well, that's not the amazing part. The amazing thing is if you were to search for Israel today, say in the newspaper, you'd find it everywhere.

If you do an electronic search as I did yesterday on articles, I'm not talking about references, I'm talking about articles about Israel in American newspapers, you could find, if you took the time like I did, 13,744 articles that talk about Israel. I'm not talking about the Jerusalem Post here. I'm talking about our newspapers. It is amazing to see the attention on this nation, this ancient nation talked about so much in the Bible.

Reminds me of the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, who was being influenced by Voltaire and was starting to question a little bit the veracity and truthfulness of the Bible. So he called in his court chaplain, the employed religious guy on staff, and he brings him in and he says, now you tell me, what's your best argument for the truthfulness of the Bible, the divine nature of scripture? And he gave him a one-word answer. He said, Israel. That was his answer.

Of course, there's a lot more to proving the truthfulness of the Bible than the nation of Israel, but I think the chaplain was onto something there. I mean, if you think about the promises made 4,000 years ago to Abraham about what would happen with his descendants. Or maybe you look at the promises made 3,000 years ago to King David, the king of Israel, about the nation and what would happen with the nation. Or you just want to look at the words of Christ about the future of the nation of Israel.

When you look at those promises, they're so ancient and it talks about things that relate to the vibrancy and the importance of the nation and the real estate that we see them now possessing and we think, wow, yeah, you're onto something there. There is something divine that seems to be beyond the human scope of just the history of history books that is guiding this nation along. And God said, I've got a plan for these folks. Yeah, they're special. You quote these passages like Deuteronomy 7:9, you're a holy nation, a people for my own possession.

But what's the deal? Reading Romans and we're finding out they're not real keen on Christ. So how special can they be if they don't even accept the basic tenets of the Messiah? God has a gracious plan for Israel that's talked about in various stages, but let's start with the bad news. And the bad news is that they seem to be missing it. Let's make an observation about the last three verses of Romans 10. That nation that's not a nation and the foolish nations are making them jealous and angry and they're being found by people that aren't seeking him, God is that is, in verse 20. And God's showing himself to people that didn't ask for him.

But of Israel, here's the summation in Israel, verse 21, all day long God has held out his hands to a disobedient and contrary people. So they are not accepting the gospel of grace. They're rejecting the gospel of grace and the person of Christ. They reject him. What do we know about modern Israel? Most Jews, this is a harsh statement, but here it comes, stubbornly reject Christ. That's what the Bible says and that's what your experience will prove. They may even be total Hasidic or conservative Orthodox Jews. They may even believe in Messiah, but they're not believing in your Messiah, which we're saying is the Messiah.

So what's the deal? We sing about him, we worship him, we have access to God through him, and they reject him. That's a problem. And that's what the Bible says. It says they are stubbornly and disobediently and with a contrarian heart, a rebellious heart, saying no to Jesus Christ. Go to Israel, try it out yourself. Start sharing with people about Jesus and how they need to put their trust in him and there's no way to get to Yahweh except through the 2,000-year-old story of Jesus Christ. It's not a well-received message in Jerusalem. They, most of them, sternly reject Christ.

But in that rejection, look down at verse 11 and 12 again of chapter 11. I ask, did they stumble in order that they might not fall? By no means. Rather, here's what I need to highlight, their trespass, what was their trespass? They were stubbornly, disobediently, rebelliously rejecting Christ. Through their trespass, salvation came to the Gentiles so as, because he's seemingly not done with them yet, to make Israel jealous. Now, if their trespass means riches for the world and their failure means riches for the Gentiles, well then how much more will their full inclusion mean? So their trespass means riches, their trespass means salvation, their failure means riches, and it's all for the non-Jewish people.

Now mark this in your mind and you already know it and it maybe will help you file what was happening in the Gospels and even in the Book of Acts. And that is that you always saw Christ presenting himself first, primarily and in some statements even exclusively to the people of Israel. Have you noticed that? And that's hard for us Gentiles reading those passages when the Canaanite woman comes up and he says no, I'm sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Remember those statements? Syrophoenician woman comes, oh, come heal me, and what does Christ say? No. Calls her a dog. This is the Christ you worshipped this morning.

Well, what's with that? And she says, oh, even the dogs get the scraps and the crumbs from the table. Remember those passages? Remember when he sends out his disciples? He's going to evangelize the world, right? Wrong. He's not going to evangelize the world. He tells them do not go to anybody but the Israelites, don't even go to the Samaritans, and those were half Israelites, don't go to them. Go exclusively to the Israelites. You see Christ continually presenting himself and his kingdom to Israel. And they say no, by and large. And then you see the shift and the turn to the Gentiles.

Specifically in the book of Acts. Even the book of Acts started with a church on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and even when Paul comes on the scene, he doesn't start in the streets of Corinth, he goes to the synagogues and he starts to speak. Here's some quotations for instance when Paul says he was reasoning in the synagogue daily to prove that Jesus was the Christ. And they rejected him and he says this: so then now I'm going to turn to the Gentiles. The picture of kingdom to Israel is presented and then it is rejected and then there is a shift to the Gentiles. Well, that looks like plan B. We're a bunch of plan B-ers here, right? Well, kind of, but not really.

Because back in Genesis chapter 12 and Genesis 15 and Genesis 17, what does God say to Abraham? I'm going to make you, out of you, I'm going to make a great nation, but through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Why? Because their rejection meant our salvation. Because their trespass in saying no then turned the gospel and the Jewish Messiah to a bunch of people like us that weren't a part of it. Actually, not going to help your self-esteem, but it says in verse number 19, we are the nation that wasn't and the foolish nation. We're people that aren't even looking for him and we're stumbling over him. He's plucking us out of the masses of the nations.

And he's doing that because Israel, at least in the timeline of God's historical plan, his redemptive plan, he's doing that because of the rejection of the Christ and the kingdom by the Israelites. And as we'll see throughout this passage, there are things like verse 12, the last line, if their rejection meant riches for the world and their failure meant riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Oh, there's more to come here then. But Jesus and the prophets made clear statements about the fact that he's not done yet. When he says to the 12 disciples at the end of the account of the rich young ruler, when Peter goes, what are we going to get, the rich young ruler he's not willing to give up anything for Christ, we've given up everything for Christ, he said, you'll be sitting on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

See? Drop down to verse number 23. Verse 23: even if they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, they will be grafted in. I know this is an illustration, but we cannot have salvation in any other way. There's no other way except through the Messiah. We have to have that relationship with Christ, the Jewish Messiah. Now they're rejecting him, so they're not there. But it says God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree?

Verse 25: lest you be wise in your own sight, I want you to understand this mystery, hasn't been clear, is not revealed clearly. Brothers, he says, a partial hardening has come upon Israel until, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. I talk about the bus and filling the seats on the bus. When all the Gentiles come in, what? And in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion and he will banish ungodliness in Jacob. It is ungodly for a Jew to reject their Messiah. Wouldn't you say that's ungodly? He's going to banish that from Jacob.

That's a nickname for Israel. They are not going to any longer reject their Messiah. One day, let's put it this way, God will turn Israel to Christ. He will turn them back and they will embrace Christ. And the sequence in our text is once the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. Now, I'm saying you get a chance to share the gospel with a Jewish person, fine, do it. They may be part of the remnant, you don't know. But you know what, in terms of sequence, we need to get all the stinking Gentiles in the bus that are assigned and elected to be on the bus, because when that's done, then God is turning his attention back to Israel.

And it says all Israel, or to put it in the words of verse 12 of chapter 11, the full inclusion will take place. And that's a big deal. God's not done with them yet. This was the question on the mind and in the heart of the early church, something that we need to clarify in our own thinking. Let's look at the last phrase in verse 12 again in Romans 11. The greatest thing that I think in this text that makes the world feel right is this last phrase. Let's start in the beginning of verse 12. Now if their trespass means riches for the world and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more riches, right, will their full inclusion mean?

Now my view on this is that they are going to be fully included again. That there will be a generation when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in where the Jewish people turn to Christ and nothing could be better than that. And when I pray and I think about things, I don't just want to think about the eternal kingdom, I want to think about that time where the full inclusion of the Jews comes back into the favor of the Messiah. And in my theology, that's called the millennium. The millennium. It's called a kingdom. I know we are aspects of kingdom are already, but they're not yet.

And they're not yet not only in an eternal state, but in my view, they're not yet even on earth. There is something that happens in Revelation 20 after that repeated statement of a thousand years, thousand year, thousand year, thousand year. At the end of that, guess what, we have the world is changed out. That, by the way, is when the sun stops shining and we get a new one. And the moon stops doing its thing and we get a new one and the stars are changed out. And that's when we're done with that kind of distinction, but that distinction will reach its fruition in my view in the millennial kingdom.

And when I pray, I want to pray that prayer not just thinking at the end and the ultimate, I want to think about the intermediate, the millennium. I want to say, as he taught us to pray, our God, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. What's the next line? Your kingdom come. I want to pray for that. I want to pray for that not just for us, but I want to pray for that for that millennial period of a thousand years, where in my view there's some unfinished business in the prophets that need to be fulfilled for the nation of Israel and we will be coregents with Christ.

We will rule and reign with him in resurrected bodies, glorified bodies, as an entire generation populates a place where the nations will stream into this place and Israel will be God's favored people. Let's get excited about the coming kingdom. Let's pray together. God, it seems inescapable from my view in this text to not see that you have a plan yet to finish with this nation. And so God, we pray even that ancient prayer from the Psalms, we pray for peace in Jerusalem. We pray for your providential protection and we pray that some more would be saved as we continue about our task of bringing in the fullness of the Gentiles.

Then God, we look forward to the great day when you turn Israel to you. I want to say Maranatha, not just for the things that we'll have, but for the things that you'll continue to do with your nation there before the eternal state, to be able to celebrate proclamations of faith in Christ. Look forward to that and reflecting on your word and on your truth, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Dave Drewry: Another round of questions with Pastor Mike Fabarez. This one tackling Modern Israel and Our Jewish Messiah. You're tuned into Focal Point. You got a question of your own? Well, we'd love to hear it. Head to focalpointradio.org and hit the Ask tab, or reach out through Facebook at facebook.com/pastormike. Your question could make it onto a future program. Pastor Mike also goes live every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 1:00 PM Central. Text LIVE to 90398 to get notified, tune in online at focalpointradio.org/live, or catch it on the free Focal Point app.

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