Hi Folks,
What does one do when he finds himself at a church that seems just a bit peculiar? It’s almost as if there is a paradox. It is a very uplifting place. The people are loving and friendly. The Lead Pastor frequently says to the congregation: I love you. I believe he means it. The preaching is unusually solid and Bible based and the application of the Bible based truths that are taught each week are appropriate and strong. And there are a multitude of spiritual activities that an attender can choose to be involved in. It is a great church!
But something is missing. Unfulfilled prophecy, eschatology (the end times), and the modern Nation of Israel are never mentioned or talked about even though much of the Bible is about these things. And looking back over past messages on podcasts, even on the day after the massacre in Israel (October 7, 2023), the worst day of slaughter for the Jewish people since Hitler’s Holocaust, not one word of any kind was said about it from the pulpit by the Lead Pastor that Sunday morning. A few weeks ago I asked one of the two associate pastors if the church leadership believed in replacement theology. I received a prompt, courteous, and truthful answer: “We believe in Covenant Theology”. That raised a red flag for me since I understand Covenant Theology to be intimately connected with replacement theology. So, what does a believer do in a situation like this?
What is Replacement Theology? It is a teaching which deprives the Nation of Israel and the Jewish people of the specific elect status which God gave to them in the Bible. People who believe in Replacement Theology are sometimes confused about certain things. Let me list some of them, with my answers in upper case, in an attempt to clear things up:
Are the Jews still God’s Chosen People? YES.
Are the Chosen people all saved and are they all going to spend eternity in heaven? NO. Only the elect, those with circumcised hearts, will spend eternity in heaven with God.
Do Jewish people have a way of salvation that is different than the way of salvation for Gentiles? NO. There is only one way of salvation for all people: through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, on the cross.
Is the gospel still to the Jew first, (Romans 1:16). YES. Is “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22) still true? YES. The Jews are no better than anyone else but God chose them for a specific purpose. The husband is no better than the wife but God chose him and not the wife as head of the family (Ephesians 5:23). It was and is like that with the Jews, the elect Jews. God has a certain order of things and He hasn’t changed that. Thousands of years ago God said this to the Jewish people through Moses: Deuteronomy 28:13 “The Lord will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.”
Did God make specific promises to the Jewish people as a Nation? YES. He did this in part through specific covenants, unconditional covenants, that He made with them. We’ll look at the Abrahamic Covenant as the first example of this. Covenant Theology attempts to nullify or change the promises made to the Jewish Nation through these covenants.
Do saved Gentile people, including those in the Church, participate in the promises that come through these covenants? YES! But they do not participate in promises made specifically to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One of those promises is the Land of Israel.
The Abrahamic Covenant
Do you remember when God made certain promises to Abraham in the Torah? In fact He made these promises to Abram even before his name was changed to Abraham. Let’s look at some of these.
Genesis 15:17-21 NLT
After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. [18] So the LORD made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River - [19] the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, [20] Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, [21] Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
The smoking firepot and flaming torch, representing God, passed between the divided animal pieces alone indicating that God cut this covenant with Abraham unilaterally. It was an unconditional covenant. It was a covenant made with Abraham and his physical descendants, the Jewish people. The Land promised to Abraham was much larger than the Land of Israel is today.
Then God promised certain other things to Abraham after he offered up his one and only child of promise, his son Isaac, on the altar after God had commanded Abraham to do so. It was a test of Abraham’s faith. God interrupted the sacrifice and said this to Abraham:
Genesis 22:16-18 NLT
“This is what the LORD says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that [17] I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. [18] And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed-all because you have obeyed me.”
Well folks, all the nations of the earth have been blessed through Abraham’s descendants. Most important of all, the Messiah is a descendant of Abraham. The Jewish people were and are descendants of Abraham and they have been a great blessing to the world.
But along the way, the Jewish people were seriously disobedient, breaking the Law in many ways, worshipping idols, and offering up their own children as sacrifices. And when their Messiah came, they rejected Him. There would be severe punishment for doing these things. The Jewish people were cast out of their Land twice and after two thousand years they still have not fully returned.
And yet because of the unconditional covenant that God made with Abraham earlier, God renewed His covenant with the Jewish people and added to it shortly before they entered the Promised Land. This additional covenant, another unconditional covenant, is probably best called the Promised Land Covenant (a name given to it by Matthew Ervin). Let’s read it:
These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites while they were in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Mount Sinai. [12] You are standing here today to enter into the covenant of the LORD your God. The LORD is making this covenant, including the curses. [13] By entering into the covenant today, he will establish you as his people and confirm that he is your God, just as he promised you and as he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. [14] “But you are not the only ones with whom I am making this covenant with its curses. [15] I am making this covenant both with you who stand here today in the presence of the LORD our God, and also with the future generations who are not standing here today.
And He also said this to them:
Deuteronomy 30:2–3 NIV
2 and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.
But many people say the Jewish people are still disobedient today. Most of them do not follow God’s Laws, many are atheists, and as a Nation they continue to reject their Messiah. And they are still being punished. Look at what happened on October 7, 2023!
Yes, all true. So how is God going to regather His people if they continue in disobedience? Here’s how. The Promised Land Covenant continues:
“The LORD your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! [7] The LORD your God will inflict all these curses (the curses of Deuteronomy 28) on your enemies and on those who hate and persecute you. [8] Then you will again obey the LORD and keep all his commands that I am giving you today.
Yes, folks, God will supernaturally effect a change in the heart of every Jewish person and they, the whole nation, will obey God’s Laws. After that, all God’s promises to the Jews will be fulfilled, in the Millennial Kingdom, after the Messiah returns. That is yet future. At that time, these things will occur:
Isaiah 2:2–3 KJV 1900
2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, That the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow unto it. 3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, To the house of the God of Jacob; And he will teach us of his ways, And we will walk in his paths: For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Folks, the God of Jacob is the God of Israel.
And here is one more passage:
Zechariah 8:23 NIV
23 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’ ”
Folks, these are just two of many examples in the Bible!
In the meantime the following verse regarding the Jewish people has not expired:
Genesis 12:3 NLT
3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
And God’s special love for the Jewish people will never pass away:
Isaiah 49:15–16 NIV
15 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! 16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.
Now, what is the point of this message?
There is a future for Israel and the Jewish people as a nation and a people. God has ordained this. The Bible attests to this.
Covenant Theology is not Biblical and it evacuates the promises and prophecies regarding Israel that are in the Bible.
Covenant Theology therefore delegitimizes Israel and its right to the Land and its right to exist. Covenant Theology therefore promotes replacement theology and antisemitism even though individual covenant theologians may not be antisemitic.
So, what should church leaders do? Those church leaders who subscribe to Covenant Theology should understand its negative aspects and reverse their position on Israel and the Jewish people. This is not a political issue. Leaders must take a stand.
Next time we’ll talk about what Covenant Theology is and how it delegitimizes Israel.
Thanks for listening!
This is Art Wolinsky.
