Yesterday’s post featured a teaching entitled, Coming Soon, by Amir Tsarfati, in which one of the key points was: If you don’t understand God’s purpose and plan for Israel, you will not fully understand God’s purpose and plan for us as believers. Over the next two days, we will focus on God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people, which provides great hope for those of us who follow Jesus. After all, God’s faithfulness to Israel is the warranty of our own salvation!

The apostle Paul included a profound statement in Romans 11:23 when he proclaimed that all Israel will be saved. What an astounding promise! But what are we to make of that promise?

We have to begin in Romans 11:1 where Paul adamantly renounced the idea that God had rejected the people of Israel. After all, Paul himself was an Israelite and God saved him! Throughout history, God has maintained a place for Israel in His grand plan.

Take a look at verses 11-12:

¹¹ I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. ¹² Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness!

In God’s grace and goodness, He opened a pathway of salvation for us Gentiles, then gave us a special calling: to make the Jewish people jealous. (Check out the OT verse in Deuteronomy 32:21. Prophetic?) As believers in Jesus the Jewish Messiah, we are to make them jealous of our relationship with Him! Sadly, atrocities such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust and more, done in the name of Christianity, have done just the opposite. Rather than drawing the Jewish people to their Messiah, Christians have either driven them away from HIM, or at best, have not been faithful to provoke them to the love of Jesus.

Today, there are churches and individual believers who wish to turn the tide. There are those of us who understand the errors of past Christian history and we long to connect and share the love of Jesus with our Jewish friends. We stand against the evils of antisemitism, including Replacement Theology in the church. God has definitely not rejected the Jewish people, and as Christians, we are Biblically obligated to pray for Israel (Psalm 122, Isaiah 62, Ezekiel 33), comfort God’s people (Isaiah 40), and bless Israel (Genesis 12).

But notice the timing of all Israel’s salvation, according to Romans 11:25:

²⁵ For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

Blindness to the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah has come to Jewish eyes until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. Until we, the church (body of believers), come to full understanding of our relationship to Christ and our responsibility toward Israel, that blindness will continue!

Believing friends, God has given us a crucial role to play in God’s ultimate redemptive plan for Israel! Though God can accomplish His purposes anyway He wants, with or without us, He invites us into the blessed privilege of joining Him in His work.

That door of understanding our relationship to Christ and our responsibility toward Israel will one day close and God will turn His gaze fully upon Israel. Through tribulation, the Jewish people will then look upon the one they rejected, they will mourn, and their eyes will be open to see the Messiah. (Zechariah 12:10)

Yes, God will accomplish His purpose, but He invites you and me to join Him in His Kingdom work with His uniquely called people. He desires that our provocation to jealousy would win them, rather than the harsh tribulation that will come about after the Rapture.

How will you pray, comfort, or bless Israel today?

Tomorrow we will continue these thoughts by asking, “What does ‘Israel’ mean?” and “What does Romans 11:29 mean by ‘irrevocable?'” Be sure to meet us back here tomorrow as we finish our thoughts on all Israel will be saved.