It pleased God in His sovereign good pleasure to chose the Jewish nation, the seed of Abraham to be a people for Himself. It was with that nation alone, out of all the nations under heaven, that God entered into a covenant that they should be His people and that He would be their God. On them He bestowed great and precious privileges, such as His Word and ordinances. They were a people near to Him. He redeemed them from the hand of their enemies, preserved them forty years in the wilderness and gave them the land of Canaan for their possession. Of that people it could be said:
“The doctrine of His holy Word
to Jacob He doth show;
His statutes and His judgments He
gives Israel to know.
To any nation never He
such favour did afford;
For they His judgments have not known
O do ye praise the Lord.
Often Israel rebelled against her God and for her sins was brought very low. Yet God remembered her and restored her, even after seventy years in the captivity of Babylon. He put it into the heart of a heathen king, Cyrus, to open the way for the return of the captives to their own land. This was the doing of the Lord and wondrous in their eyes. Jerusalem was rebuilt and the worship of Jehovah set up again in the second temple. This was all preparatory to the coming of Zion’s King as Haggai
in prophecy had indicated. “For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.” Haggai 2: 6, 7.
And in the time appointed the Desire of all nations did come, The prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Is. 9: 6, 7. “But when the Son of man comes shall He find faith on the earth?” “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.” The Jewish nation was not ready for the coming of the Messiah when He appeared, except those few who, like Simeon, were waiting for the consolation of Israel.
What was the tragic outcome of this? Nothing less than the rejection of their own Messiah with the cry “Crucify Him, crucify Him,” and again, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Of that city of Jerusalem, the city of the great King, the Saviour had earlier declared: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and ye would not!” So, too, do we earlier find Him when He was come near Jerusalem and beheld it, weeping over it saying, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” Now was to be fulfilled that solemn declaration of the Lord: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Judicial blindness took hold of the nation, under which, as a nation, they still labour, refusing to acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah, the Prince of life and glory. Not all are cast away, for even unto this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace of the sons of Israel who do acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah.
Into that place of privilege and blessing so long occupied by the Jewish nation, the Gentile Nations and especially the Christian Church has come. The casting away of them was the reconciling of the world. The One who is the Glory of His people Israel is the Light to lighten the Gentiles. And how gloriously has that Light shined throughout almost twenty centuries of the world’s history. “The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung out.” What countless souls out of the Gentile nations have beheld the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world! How many of them are already on Mount Zion above, praising the Lamb of God, who loved them and who washed them from their sins with His own blood! What a place of privilege and blessing the Gentile nations occupy! Would that they were alive to it! The warning of God to them is clear: “Be not highminded but fear: for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.”
Well might the Jewish nations, seeing the Gentile nations occupying their room, despairingly cry with Esan: “Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father.” Well might it be so, were they not beloved for the father’s sake. He who cast them off has not cast them off for ever. The Apostle could testify: “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is My Covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sin.” The day is coming and must be fast approaching when the prophecy of Zechariah will be fulfilled with respect to the Jewish nation: “And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.”
If the children of Israel mourned with such a great and very sore lamentation over Jacob at his death that the Canaanites called it the mourning of the Egyptians, and if the mourning in Judah over the death of good King Josiah was so great that no greater mourning for an earthly king could be imagined, what will it be when the Jews are smitten at heart because they crucified the Lord of glory! Will not the sound of their weeping be heard to the ends of the earth? What a glorious day that will be when the Jews embrace Christ! Would you not like to be alive when the New Testament Joseph makes Himself known to His brethren? If so, then pray for the ingathering of the Jews. In so doing you will be hastening not only Israel’s release but what will be as life from the dead to the Gentiles as well. “I will yet be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.”