Hi
reddogs
"Therefore I say to
you, the kingdom of God will be taken from
you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.
I believe that one must always be mindful of the 'subject' of God's sentences.
Let me give you an example: Did God say that no man can eat pork or that the Israelites could not eat pork?
Jesus was talking to the leaders at that moment and the 'you' is the band of leaders standing before him. Yes, God is going to yank the His Kingdom from their hands and put it, or give it, to those who now follow the gospel. However, it doesn't change God's proclaimed relationship to the 'faithful' of Israel.
Just as Jesus told those same leaders that they were white-washed sepulchres, he directed that charge strictly to the leaders of God's people standing before them. God hasn't taken anything away from the 'nation of Israel'. In fact, they were still doing the work of God that He had assigned them when they cried out for His Son's death. They carried out the means by which our justification came. Just as the angel told Daniel that they would do.
To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To bring in everlasting righteousness,, And to anoint the Most Holy.
Now, some argue that the Jews failed in this, but I don't think they did. The Jews were God's people raised up by Him to do His bidding upon the earth. Even though the nation, as a whole, was always pretty wrong about their understanding of Him, He still was able to accomplish through the faithful ones, all that He wanted done.
Paul writes that the most important reason that there is Judaism, is that they were the people entrusted with the very oracles of God. Understand please, just as I wrote earlier despite Isreal's faithlessness, they accomplished what God raised them up to do!!!! They didn't fail in anything. They slaughtered the Lamb of God, the final Passover Lamb. That had to be done and God wasn't about to let the most dear thing to His heart be killed by wicked pagans!!! No!!!
The Jews did. They did that by sacrificing Jesus, just as they had been doing to earthly lambs for centuries. The writer of the words of Hebrew confirms it for us and tried to explain it that way to the Jewish people.
He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
Make and end to sin.
By the death of Jesus, at their own hands, they had accomplished what God said that they needed to do.
To make reconciliation for iniquity,
The Jews did that through the death of Jesus!
To bring in everlasting righteousness,
What christian doesn't believe today that the death of Jesus has give believers everlasting righteousness? The Jews did that by sacrificing Jesus.
Do you not know? Have you not heart? The Jews are God's people. They are the apple of His eye, and despite their continued rebellion, just as with many christian believers, He still loves us and we are still able to hold on to His promises because of what Jesus did. What the Jews did to Jesus? That was all a part of God's plan of redemption.
But don't be misguided, Just as Jesus went down into the grave to preach to those who had gone before, God's word tells us that there's going to be a day that He (by His awesome power and good will) turn the hearts of Jacob back to Him. But today, today is the day that we all wait and even today, many, many Jews are beginning to understand 'who' Jesus is. God is already at work turning their hearts to Jacob, but I believe there will come a time that it becomes a groundswell movement. That Jesus will be preached all over Israel, in Jerusalem!
The Jews are God's people and I'd be very careful in misrepresenting them or making some claim that He no longer loves them as the apple of His eye. Yes, the killed the Savior. But I've read the whole book. I know that it was always God's plan that His people would work it all out upon the earth...for me and for you, and for all those pagan Gentiles who would come to faith. We are in that period of the chronology of the Scriptures. The period that Peter has written to us about. The time of God's patience. He worked out a plan of salvation right before our very eyes by first having everything written down that we would 'see' it as it unfolded. Remember what Jesus said when they were shouting and proclaiming him the Messiah. "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How I have longed to gather you like chicks, but you were unwilling."
They really should have known who he was. It was written in Daniel the 'when' that he would be here. But nobody thought at the time to figure that out. He stood before them in their synagogue and read to them all the things that Isaiah had written that the Messiah would do...And then he went out and did it. But nobody thought at the time to figure that out.
Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.” Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.
Who is 'HE'? Friend, if you know the answer to that, you also know that all that Israel did, including the final sacrifice for mankind's sin, was God's plan from the beginning.
Finally
And to anoint the Most Holy.
I think it was Mary Magdalene that did that for us. Another of God's faithful Jews who now believed in Jesus. Mary was the perfect person to anoint Jesus. She believed in him. What a vulgar thing for the Jewish leaders to have done so. And you know what? Nobody even knew it. No one was connecting the dots.
God bless,
Ted
