Thus saith the
Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon
and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves
thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the
seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus
saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the
earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all
that they have done, saith the Lord (Jer. 31:35-37).
NOTE:
This text is
alluded, by premillennial dispensationalists, to support their view of “the
perpetuity of Israel’s nationhood”—that the state of Israel, as a political
entity, is under the eternal blessing of God, and will always be a nation, and
that we should therefore support the modern state of Israel.
(I)
Rev. Martyn McGeown
[Source:
The Bible and Israel]
But perhaps the premillennial dispensationalist insists that his
position is correct by quoting the clearest passage on the perpetuity of Israel’s
nationhood: “If those ordinances (the sun, moon, and stars) depart from before
me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a
nation before me forever. Thus saith the LORD: if heaven above can be measured
and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all
the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD” (Jer.
31:36-37).
What a wonderful promise; but pause for a moment. Have we not
learned already who the seed of Israel is? The seed of Israel is centrally Christ, and therefore the seed of Israel
includes all who belong to him and believe in him (see Galatians
3:16, 29). The seed of Israel has
nothing to do with carnal, unbelieving Jews, whether in Jeremiah’s day or in
our day.
Does Jeremiah mean, therefore, that the state of Israel, as a
political entity, is under the eternal blessing of God, and will always be a
nation? Can we then apply this to that state in the Middle East, whose current
prime minister is Benjamin Netanyahu? Can the dispensationalist appeal to this
text to prove that we should support the modern state of Israel? (Notice that I
am not making a political point, but a theological and exegetical one).
First, what does the text mean by “nation”? The Hebrew word
is goy, the plural of which, goyim, means the Gentiles. A
nation would appear to be a distinct people with a head or a people with a
king. Second, how did God keep this promise in a way to satisfy the most
literalistic premillennial dispensationalist? Israel only became a nation at
Mount Sinai in Exodus 19; before that, Israel was a company of slaves. At Mount
Sinai, God declared Israel to be a peculiar treasure (Hebrew: segulah; Greek: Laos
periousios)
and a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Hebrew: goy
qadosh;
Greek: ethnos hagion) (vv. 5–6).
What about Israel’s subsequent history? Was Israel a nation when
the ten tribes were carried away into captivity; was Israel a nation when the
remaining two tribes were carried into Babylon for seventy years? Was Israel a
nation when she existed as a plaything for the nations from the decree of Cyrus
to the time of the Roman empire, and when no Davidic king ever sat on the earthly
throne in Jerusalem again? Was Israel a nation when she was destroyed in AD 70;
and was Israel a nation from AD 70 to AD 1948/1967 (when the Jews were
scattered among the nations)? And is Israel a nation today?
Third, as we noted above, the promise of Jeremiah
31:36-37 is
made explicitly to the seed of Israel, and not to
the corporate entity known as Israel. The seed of Israel includes all those,
whether ethnic Jew or ethnic Gentile, who believe in Jesus Christ, and excludes
all ethnic Jews (and all ethnic Gentiles) who reject Jesus Christ. Since the
Jews who returned to Israel in AD 1948 were unbelievers, Jeremiah 31 has
nothing to do with them.
But what of the nationhood of Israel? In which
people is
this promise fulfilled if not in the unbelieving Jewish state in the Middle
East? And is there a king to sit on David’s throne? The New Testament
tells us that Jesus is the son or seed of David and that he sits on David’s
throne: “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” (Luke 1:32-33). Premillennial dispensationalists are fond of asserting that
this prophecy will be fulfilled in a future millennial reign, but that is
impossible, for Luke 1 promises an everlasting kingdom, not one
limited to a mere millennium. Besides that, Peter teaches in Acts 2 that
Jesus Christ is already sitting on the throne of David in heaven (Acts
2:30, 33–36).
Jesus indicates the identity of the nation to whom God makes the
promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 when he warns the Jews of his
day in Matthew 21:43, “Therefore I say unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken
from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” And we do
not have to look too far to discover which nation that is: it is the church, the church of Jesus Christ, made
up of believing Jews and Gentiles, who are the seed of Abraham, the children of
God, the Jews of the New Testament. Peter writes to the church in these words:
“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar
people … which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God”
(1 Peter 2:9–10), but the holy nation is the name given to Israel
in Exodus 19:5–6. Unashamedly, Peter applies that name to the church! The
church is the holy nation, and since the church will never be destroyed, in her
and not in the modern post-1948 state of Israel, the promise of Jeremiah
31 is fulfilled. Titus 2:14 is also instructive:
Paul designates the churches in Crete as the “peculiar people” for whom Christ
died, the name taken from Exodus 19:5 (Greek: laos
periousios)!
It must not escape our notice either that the subject of
Jeremiah 31 is the new covenant, which God promises to make
with “the house of Judah and the house of Israel” (v. 31). The promise of the
new covenant is twofold: first, God promises to write his law in the hearts of
his people (that is, he promises regeneration); and second, he promises to
forgive his people’s sins: “I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember
their sin no more” (v. 34).
Christ fulfilled the new covenant, which has nothing to do with
earthly Israel, land promises, or a temple. In Matthew
26:28 he
explains, “For this is my blood of the new testament (or covenant), which is
shed for many for the remission of sins.” In 2
Corinthians 3:6 Paul
explains that he and his apostolic colleagues are “ministers of the new
testament” (or covenant). The chief difference between the old and new
covenants, according to 2 Corinthians 3, is that the old covenant was external
(“tables of stone” [v. 3]), while the new covenant is internal (“in fleshy
tables of the heart”), which fits with God’s promise to write his law on the
hearts of his people. Second Corinthians is a letter written to a largely
Gentile church, and yet Paul applies the promises of the new covenant to the
church, not to the Jews, whom he describes as blinded with a veil over their
hearts so that they cannot understand the gospel of the Scriptures (see vv.
14–15). Moreover, the book of Hebrews applies the new covenant blessings to the
church, not to apostate Israel (Heb. 8:6–13). In fact, the church of
Jesus Christ, which enjoys the knowledge of God and the forgiveness of
sins, is the house of Israel.
Are there then no promises to the political entity known as
Israel? The answer is an unequivocal “No.” Will Israel as a political entity
ever rebuild her temple and worship God as she did in the Old Testament? That
is very unlikely, but even if she does manage to build a temple in Jerusalem
and institute a priesthood, offer sacrifices, and celebrate the feasts, it will
be just another sign of Israel’s apostasy from God. If the sacrifices of the
wicked were abominable to God in the Old Testament (Prov.
15:8; 21:27), how much more abominable
would the recommencing of animal sacrifices be in the future after
the one, only sacrifice of the Son of God? And yet there are many premillennial
dispensationalists across the globe, many of them politically active, who hope
and pray for such a day!
All the promises of God are in
Christ (2 Cor. 1:20). All the promises of God
were made to Christ, as the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16). Therefore, there can be no
promise of any kind for any unbeliever outside of Jesus Christ. The calling of
the Jew, as the calling of the Gentile, is to repent and believe in Jesus
Christ and join the church of Jew and Gentile, male and female, bond and free,
where there is no difference (Gal. 3:28). “And as many as walk
according to this rule, peace be upon them and mercy” (Gal.
6:16).
For they are the Israel of God!
-----------------------------------------------
(II)
(II)
More to come! (DV)
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