There is a day coming in which there shall be a national conversion of the Jews or Israelites. The now blinded and rejected Jews shall at length be converted into the faith of Christ, and join themselves to the Christian Church. There are many promises of this in the Old Testament, but I shall confirm it from Romans, chap. 11, where the apostle purposely insists upon it.
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Though that people have dreadfully stumbled, the more dreadful that Christ was the stumbling stone to them, yet they have not fallen so as never to rise again, Rom. 11: v.11. “Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy.” Now as their stumbling by unbelief did eventually cause the Gentile world to rise to their feet, after they had lain long immersed in ignorance of God, and wickedness; so God will make use of the grace bestowed on the Gentile world, to awaken the Jews to the consideration of their true interest, by way of holy emulation, that they shall think with themselves as the prodigal, Luke 15: v.17.
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The covenant made with their fathers, particularly with Abraham, Gen. 17, that he would be the God of his seed after him, secures the conversion of that people. It was with that covenant, in respect of them, as with some rivers of which it is observed that they run a good way above ground, and then are swallowed up in the earth, and so run many miles under ground, but at length break out again, and run above ground till they come to the sea. So that covenant runs visibly till the days of the apostles, but now its visible efficacy is interrupted, but it will break forth again in their conversion, never to be rejected more. So the apostle tells us, they are thereby still the holy nation, verse 16, the nation particularly dedicated to God, and he will not always want what is consecrated to himself. The national election is still their privilege, for verse 28, as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sake. And by virtue of the covenant made with their fathers, God has a love to that nation: and God’s will will certainly terminate in good deeds at length: and that because the gift and calling of that nation to the adoption and covenant are irreversible, verse 29. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
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The apostle expressly asserts it, verse 25, 26. In these he shews that the blindness of the Jews is only in part, and to last only to a certain time, when there shall be a national conversion, and so all Israel shall be saved. This is not meant of the spiritual Israel, for their conversion could be no mystery as this is. But as the conversion of the Gentiles was a mystery to the Jews, and to Gentiles themselves under the Old Testament, Eph. 3: v.3-6. So is that of the Jews, to the Gentiles and Jews themselves, under the New Testament. And as many Jews then would not believe the one, so many Christians now believe not the other.
Use. Believe it and help it on by your prayers. Ply the throne of grace earnestly for it. Join cordially in the public prayers for it, and remember it in your family and secret prayers. Be ashamed to say what is it to us?
Motive 1. They were concerned for us when we were in their case, and they in ours, and therefore it is but just that we repay them thus, Song 8: v.8, 9. O remember the case seriously. What think you of Pharaoh’s butler that remembered not Joseph, who was so kind to him in the prison. Brethren, we of the Gentile world, were shut up in the prison of unbelief, then they walked at liberty, but minded us. Now they are in that prison and we are let out, and shall we forget them. “For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.”
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Have you any love to our Lord Jesus Christ, to the advancing of his kingdom and glory in the world? Then pray, yea, pray earnestly for this. Are you not taught to pray, thy kingdom come. O what an accession to the Mediator’s glory will the conversion of the Jews be. Would you see the crown set on Christ’s head in the world more solemnly and gloriously than ever it has yet been, then let us join with the great multitude, Rev. 19: v.6. Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. And if we wish to see a great marriage day for Christ in the world, then verse 7, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him; for the marriage of the lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” O brethren, spread out your narrow spirits be public spirited and show it here. True, we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, to His glory, But O! what a farther rich revenue of glory would accrue to him, if they whose countrymen he was, and who crucified him as a malefactor, and justify their deed to this day, were brought to repentance and to own him to be so with us.
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Have you any pity to a nation of perishing souls? then pray for their conversion. Common compassion should engage you to this, for such a case as theirs is, for the present, hopeless for eternity. “He that believeth not shall be damned.” But there is more to challenge our concern for them than for any other nation in the world.
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God himself hath shown a peculiar concern for them, not only of old, when he took them for his peculiar people, but since, in that he hath made a particular promise of the conversion of that nation, when that of other nations has been wrapped up in a general promise.
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All the means of grace, and acceptance through Jesus Christ, that we have now, we had originally from them. They were our masters in the knowledge of God, and first put the book even the book of God into our hands, Isa. 2: v.3. Luke 24: v.47. It was their Moses, their prophets, their apostles (all of them Jews) that wrote this book, by which eternal life is brought to us. Nay it is their countryman Jesus, who is the ground of all our hope, who we believe is the Son of God. “For of them as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” It was the light that came out from among them, that enlightened our dark part of the world. And now that their teachers are blinded, will we not put up a petition for them, Lord that they may receive their sight.
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The church and all the privileges thereof, which we enjoy this day were originally theirs. “For to them pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.” We are well this day, and all the churches, in comparison of our fellow Gentiles, yet abiding without. And how so, but because we have got into the tents of the Jews, where the Lord shews his glory. “God shall, said Noah, enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” But alas! the original possessors are out, they have left them in a fit of madness; but there is room enough for them and us both, and shall not we pray, that they may come to themselves and return. It is their olive into which we are engrafted, they are the natural branches, Rom. 11: v.17-21.
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Have you any love to, or concern for the church, for the work of reformation, the reformation of our country, the reformation of the world? Any longing desire for the revival of that work now at a stand; for a flourishing state of the church, that is now under a decay? Then pray for the conversion of the Jews.
Are you longing for a revival to the churches, now lying like dry bones, would you fain have the Spirit, of life enter into them? Then pray for the Jews. “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world; what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead.” That will be a lively time, a time of great outpouring of the Spirit, that will carry reformation to a greater height than yet has been.
Are you longing for the increase of the church, then pray. Alas! our mother that has born seven, languisheth and waxeth feeble. Dry breasts and a miscarrying womb is much her plague this day. But then she shall renew her strength and bring forth many. “For if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness?” Not only shall she be increased with the coming in of the Jews, but with more of the Gentiles. For their conversion shall be more the riches of the world, than their fall was; yet to that is owing all the gospel riches this day among the Gentiles. “Then shall the light of the moon be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be seven fold as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.”
(Extract from a Sermon on Zechariah 12: v.12 by the Rev. Thomas Boston)
In a review of a lecture on “The History of the Jews” by the Rev. J. R. Anderson, of Kirkfield Parish Church, Glasgow in 1838, the reviewer stated: Our author winds up with an appeal to his audience to extend to the house of Israel our compassionate regard, and to pray and labour for their conversion and future restoration, when Jerusalem shall no longer be “trodden down of the Gentiles”. God hath not “cast away His people”. It seems reasonable to believe that after the ingathering of the dispersed of Israel, the Jewish converts may be the foremost missionaries of the world, and that the wealth of Jewish bankers may be employed for the extension of the gospel to the ends of the earth. The lecture, the reviewer stated, deserved a wide circulation, and is calculated to deepen the interest of devout readers in the Hebrew Church as the Mother Church of Christendom. The reviewer mentions that he had the privilege of repeatedly meeting and hearing the Rev. J. R. Anderson fifty two years ago. “He said severe things at times; but he was a Barnabas as well as a Boanerges. The doctrines of grace were the rejoicing of his own heart, and he preached a full and free Gospel to sinners of mankind with rare fidelity, unction, persuasiveness and power. What he had heard and seen and handled of the Word of life in secret study and devotion, he declared to eager solemnised, and deeply impressed listeners”.
(F.P. Mag. Vol. 13 pp. 40 and 362).
W.M.