AN UNPREACHED SERMON (215)
There is only one major thing in my mind as I settle down to write this week: the very moving remembrance tribute to the survivors and those exterminated at Auschwitz. The BBC coverage was second to none and one of the most moving pieces of television I have watched in years. It is now over 80 years since the Nazi holocaust and the efficiently organised attempt to rid the world of the Jewish people. The death toll numbers are staggering and must never be forgotten: 1 million plus at Auschwitz –Birkenau alone, and over 6 million in total. By far, the majority were Jewish, but Christians, gypsies, political dissenters and countless others who did not fit in to Hitler’s ideology were also included in the overall figures. The contributions by way of testimony from the survivors who took part in the remembrance ceremony were both moving and harrowing.
Although not a survivor himself, the contribution by Ronald F Lauder, the President of the World Jewish Congress was outstanding; especially in the way he highlighted that the Nazi extermination machine did not suddenly appear overnight, but was well prepared for by the indifference to antisemitism that had been brewing in Germany well before 1939. His emphasis was clear: we are living in a period of similar antisemitism in today’s world. His tireless work for the Pillars of Remembrance Organisation over the last 30 years has done much to ensure both the place and the memories of Auschwitz are held in sacred remembrance.
How tragic, then, that the nation who gave us Martin Luther with his insistence on the centrality and authority of the Bible, should have swallowed hook line and sinker the false teachings of Nazism. If only they had read what the Bible has to say about the Jewish people and realised the tremendous debt that we as Christians owe to God’s covenanted promises and unique revelation given to them as a nation. Even though the Jews have returned in unbelief to the land promised them, God’s promises and plans have never been revoked. The Jews by and large may have despised the covenant and gone so far as to refuse any recognition of Jesus as the true Messiah, but God has not gone back on His side of the covenant to them. They are still integral to His plan for the whole world. No wonder antisemitism is rooted in the desire to see Israel wiped off the map. It is nothing less than Satan-inspired.
But God’s plans and intentions still stand. Scripture repeatedly stresses the unconditional and permanent nature of all His promises. Both in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament writings, God demonstrates time and again that He deals with His people in ways that are consistent with His elective purposes.
· “My chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they may declare my praise” (Isaiah 43:20, 21).
· “I will take you for my people” (Exodus 6:7).
· “I have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26)
· “The Lord has chosen you to be a people for His own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 14:2).
· “Thou didst establish for Thyself Thy people Israel to be Thy people forever; and Thou O Lord didst become their God” (2 Samuel 7:24).
These reiterated assurances can hardly be set aside as irrelevant or contingent when the survival of the Jews is the undeniable miracle of history. No matter how determined and violent the attempts at extermination have been, the Jews still exist in the world as a testimony to God’s faithfulness. He never goes back on His word, even though His chosen people have turned their backs on Him and returned to their land largely in unbelief. Sadly, modern Israel is a secular state like many other western democracies.
These promises also extend to the land of Israel, not just to the Jewish people. It is only theirs because first it is the Lord’s; a highly delicate position in the political world of today’s Middle East. Yet, the testimony of Scripture is sure.
· “My land, says the Lord God” (2 Chron 7:20; Jer 2:7; 16:18)
· “The land of the Lord” (Hosea 9:3).
· “The land of promise” (Hebrews 11:9).
· “The Most High assigned nations their lands; He determined where peoples should live. He assigned to each nation a god, but Jacob’s descendants He chose for Himself” (Deuteronomy 32:8 GNB)
Such donation of the land goes all the way back to God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12:1-9; 13:14-17; 15:18-21). The title-deeds to what we loosely call Palestine today are made over to Israel in irrefragable assurances.
The roots of antisemitism go back a long way too. It rails against God’s covenant with this one nation and the specific promises made to them. And Jesus recognised this in His parable given on the Mount of Olives about the blossoming of the fig tree (Luke 21:29; Matthew 24:32). In the Holy Land, the fig is almost the only tree that loses it leaves. With the coming of summer its buds are clearly evident. Green buds herald the hot season is approaching. Jesus used this annual event to emphasise the place of the Jews in human and redemption history.
· The fig tree is Israel (Joel 1:7)
· God’s rejection of Israel is real, but not forever (Matthew 21:18, 19)
· If we want to know how God is working out His purposes we need to “look at the fig tree” (Luke 21:29).
For some strange reason when preachers embark on a major study of Romans, they often leave out any teaching on Romans 9, 10, 11. To do so, leaves people spiritually impoverished. These chapters are essential to the whole story of redemption, showing how God’s covenant, plans and purposes will be realised through Christ alone. The way of personal salvation and world transformation dare not leave out the work of Christ for Jews and Gentiles alike. In His death and resurrection God seals both the old and new covenants and fulfils His word. Paul’s summary is clear: “As regards the Gospel they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved because of their forefathers” (Romans 11:25). I strongly recommend a reading of these chapters in one sitting, with world events regarding holocaust remembrance and the rise of present-day antisemitism not far from your mind.
Never forget that as Christians we are included in “the commonwealth of Israel” (Ephesians 2:19) and have been “grafted in to the olive tree” (Romans 11:17-24).
Of all the Psalms my favourite is 124 and it is inevitable that I want to quote it at the end of this mini message. It is a solid affirmation of what Jewish and Christian believers have put their trust in to find security in a covenant keeping God.
“Now Israel may say, and that truly,
If that the Lord had not our cause maintained;
If that the Lord had not our right sustained,
When cruel men against us furiously
Rose up in wrath to make of us their prey.
Then certainly they had devoured us all,
And swallowed quick, for ought that we could deem;
Such was their rage, as we might well esteem.
And as fierce floods before them all things drown,
So had they brought our souls to death quite down
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