There is a glaring question in the Bible: Is God a covenant-keeping God?
In Genesis 12, God made an everlasting covenant with Abraham, and He confirmed it to Isaac and to Jacob.
However, there are a growing number of Christians today who dismiss Israel as a rejected and replaced people, considering God's promises to restore them to be null and void.
What happened? Did God go back on His promises?
Was He forced to give up on His covenant people and start from scratch? Does man’s faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?
It’s an important question to ask because the way God deals with Israel is the way that God deals with us. If He is able to forget His covenant with Israel, then He is also able to forget His covenant with us.
Paul wrestles with this question in Romans 9-11: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” (11:1) Why is Paul so convinced of this? Because he knows the character of God— “When we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.”
This is what leads the apostle Paul to declare: “For I tell you that the Messiah has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed”
There are many opinions today about who are the people of God.
If you have faith in the Messiah of Israel, you have been adopted into the family of God and share in the rich root of the Olive Tree.
“Remember that at one time you were separated from the Messiah, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in the Messiah Jesus — you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah.”
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“So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles… so as to make Israel jealous.”
Despite the controversy over the Messiah’s identity, the early followers of Jesus believed that one day Israel would welcome their Messiah.
“For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?”
“And now the Lord says, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him... Indeed He says, ‘It is too small a thing that you should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
Through Israel, light has come to the world in the form of God's mercy.
Through the Gentiles showing Israel the same mercy, Israel's ongoing restoration becomes a blessing to the whole world.
So that God’s love, mercy, and desire for reconciliation will be known by all.
He alone will receive all the glory.
“For [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility... that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace”
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”