For July 26

 

Sermon: Faith of Our Fathers

​

I. God’s Faithfulness

A. As Dana’s introduction to our Gospel Lesson from Matthew noted, Christians have felt for many centuries that when Jesus came, He brought about a new Covenant with people, perhaps even giving credence to the name, New Testament that begins with Jesus in the four Gospels. We may naively feel that since the Jews rejected Jesus, Jesus has replaced them resulting in a New Covenant with us Gentiles. A New Testament, or a New Will. This is known as the Replacement Theory, the belief that Jesus’ coming replaced the Old Testament with the New Testament, rendering the Old Testament merely history. So, as Christians, we would not need to concern ourselves with Jewish practices or beliefs. Unfortunately, the Bible itself shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

B. Taking Replacement theory even a step further, Jewish persecutions, like the Holocaust, would be seen as God’s judgement on the Jewish race for their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. Anti-Semitic attitudes toward Israel and Jews are prevalent even today. During the Israeli-Gaza war, protestors on college campuses spewing hatred, condemned Israel for their retaliation against Gaza for the attacks within Israel with savage murders and rapes, and taking 250 prisoners, many of whom died in captivity. Protestors chanted “from the river to the sea” which meant killing all Jews in Israel, from the eastern border of the Jordan River to the western border of the Mediterranean Sea. Our initial national response allowed such hateful protests, under the guise of free speech, until finally counter actions stopped them, although not necessarily condemning their actions. Even at the Annual Conferences of our former denomination, each year I attended there was always a faction that wanted to pass resolutions condemning Israel for insisting on sovereignty in Israel, despite the Biblical basis for Israel’s claim.

C. The underlying question we must then address is: Has God rejected the Jews, revoking His covenants with them with a New Covenant of Christianity? To answer that, we need to consider the very nature of God, who made His initial covenants with Israel. First of all, our God is a Faithful God, meaning that when He gives His word, it is irrevocable and unchanging. He will never change even one word.

D. That’s expressed in the opening verse of our Hymn of Preparation, “Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God our Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as Thou has been, thou forever will be. ”   God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That’s the very basis and strength of our belief and trust in our God. If we believe He always keeps His Word, we can trust Him to remain faithful to all His promises.

E. God’s Word is often given in covenants, sacred promises made to specific people. The rainbow is a seal of the covenant God gave to all people that He would never again destroy the world by flood. Prophecies

of the Messiah, though given through Jewish prophets, were intended for all people. God’s specifically promised Abraham and Sarah a son, to be named Isaac. God also made covenants with Abraham that were for him and his descendants. In Genesis 12:3, when God first called Abram to Canaan, God promised Abram, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”.

F. God would later rename Abram, Abraham, meaning “father of many”. His descendants  eventually became the nation of Israel, the Jewish race, with God promising: I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you, for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” God’s everlasting covenant was made with Abraham and his descendants for the land of Canaan, to be an everlasting possession of Abraham and his countless descendants, and that God would be their God. Every part of God’s covenant was irrevocable, regardless of Israel’s unfaithfulness. God would affirm His covenant through Abraham’s son, Isaac, and through  Isaac’s son Jacob, who God later renamed Israel. Consequently, God is often referred to as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God’s everlasting covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would become the root of the Jewish nation, which would bear Jacob’s, or Israel’s name.

G. As a seal of that covenant’s acceptance, God required Abraham and all males of his household, servants as well as future descendants, to be circumcised, just as Jesus would be, as a descendant of Abraham. God’s Covenant with Abraham, that all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants, meant God’s blessing and salvation would be given to the whole world through a specific descendant, Jesus. Not as a new covenant beginning with Jesus, but through the covenant with Abraham continuing through Jesus.

​

II. Matthew 5:17-20

A. Jesus even made that clear in in our Gospel Lesson when He says,  “I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. ”  Hebrew characters are made with differing strokes of a pen. Changing even a dash of a character can change the whole meaning of the word. But Jesus adamantly states that not even the smallest letter, not a stroke of a pen will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. The Law meaning the Torah, the Prophecies, and the writings, essentially the entire Old Testament. So, no covenant in the OT has been abolished. Jesus, as a descendant of Abraham, a Jew, was included in the covenant with Abraham, and born fulfilling the prophecies of the Messiah. He had come to fulfill all the covenants of the OT, even the prophecies of His return.

B. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, He observes the God given Jewish practices, even transforming them, but not abolishing them, into His New Covenant that would now include all people. He would observe the OT Passover, by which God saved the Israelites from death by the blood of a Perfect Lamb, but transform it to a New Covenant of Communion, symbolizing the opening of salvation for all people by His blood as the Perfect Lamb. By His Death, He would become the Chief Priest to offer the permanent sacrifice for sin, and be the Perfect Sacrifice, not just for Israel’s sin, but for the sins of all people. His Death and Resurrection met every prophetic promise of the OT. So, we see that Jesus was a continuation of the Abrahamic Covenant of the OT, the fulfillment of God’s prophetic promises of His Messiah, who extended, not replaced, God’s Covenant as a New Covenant with all nations, all peoples.

C. Yet we cannot overlook the specific promises made just to Abraham and his descendants. That God would bless those who blessed the Jews, and curse those who cursed the Jews, the descendants of Abraham. That the Promised Land of Israel was an everlasting possession of Abraham’s descendants, and the Jews would continue to be God’s chosen people through which He would bless all nations, Jews and Gentiles. With these promises in mind, we should then evaluate our attitudes toward the land and nation of Israel, where Gentiles would be welcome to live, but Israel would be recognized as the Sovereign government by God’s irrevocable covenant.

D. However, the question still remains: Does the Jewish rejection of the Messiah mean we can simply discard the OT as no longer valid? But, if we want to understand the NT, we must recognize that Jesus was a Jew, born of the promises of the Old Testament, that became the foundation of the New Testament. Trying to build a faith on the NT without the OT, would be like building a second story without a first floor. So, it is essential to build our NT faith upon the OT foundation. And there is a growing movement of Jews accepting Jesus as the Promised Messiah, calling themselves Messianic Jews. Jews who follow Jesus’ teaching as well as the Jewish practices of their roots.

​

III. Romans 11:13-21

A. Paul would have been a strong example of such a Messianic Jew. As the apostle to the Gentiles, he talks about Gentiles being grafted into the Jewish tree of faith in his epistle to the Roman church. In the OT, Israel is often symbolized as an olive tree, a cultivated tree, supported by its covenantal roots giving the tree its strength, and its stability.

B. By contrast, the Gentiles, were represented as a wild olive tree, who now as believers, desired to be grafted into the olive tree. In agriculture, a foreign branch isn’t grafted into a tree unless the tree becomes fruitless or barren. The hope is that the grafted branch will impact the rest of the tree into becoming fruitful again. Before Jesus’ coming, Israel had become fruitless and barren. So, Paul talks about the impact of grafting as making the Jews envious of Gentile inclusion into God’s family, and becoming fruitful again. Paul also talks about branches having been broken off, symbolic of non-believing Jews,  Grafting Gentile branches into the Jewish tree meant sharing the nourishment from the roots, allowing the tree to bear good fruit again.

C. What does it mean to be grafted into God’s family?  Remember, grafting-in a wild olive branch was done to return the olive tree to being “fruitful. ” Not to make one branch appear superior to another. Left on our own, we’d remain spiritually fruitless and left to die in our sins. However, upon hearing the Gospel message, the Holy Spirit cuts to the very core of our being, our souls. Once we respond to Him, God places His life giving Hands on our hearts, and tightly wraps them with His Holy Spirit for the grafting process to begin. We don’t have to wait until we’re made appropriately ready, we become part of His family at the beginning of the cultivating process, but our Father’s goal is to change us from what we once were, into a beautiful, fruit-bearing branch of His tree.

D. But Paul warns his Gentile audience not to feel superior to the Jewish branches, because all are supported by the same root. The branches do not support the root, the root supports the branches. And if God didn’t spare the natural branches, neither would he spare the Gentile branches grafted in if we become unfruitful.

E. But to be clear, as seen from the Call of Abram, in Genesis 12, God had always planned for His gospel to reach both Jews and Gentiles. His Covenant with Abraham did not say, “only your descendants will be blessed”, but rather “all people” will be blessed through Abraham’s descendants. However, it was when the Jewish people rejected the Gospel that ‘us’ Gentiles were, through faith, grafted into God’s family. God’s plan has always been for His Gospel to be preached to reach, teach, baptize, and make disciples of all nations. That’s the responsibility of being in God’s family.

F. One of the most serious mistakes of Christian evangelization has been to make Jews give up their faith practices to become Christian, when in fact it is we Christians who should be embracing the Jewish roots of our faith in Jesus. Our opening hymn, God of Our Fathers, hints at such a connection with our faith fathers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

G We started today’s message from the viewpoint of being Christians and Jews. Separate trees, separate beliefs, separate practices. Old and New Covenants. Perhaps even antisemitic. I hope that now you will see the continuity linking the Jewish and Christian faiths. The God of our Fathers of faith, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were promised a Messiah, who presented Himself to Israel as the fulfillment of those promises and faith principles, and we saw Him remove the barriers between faiths and peoples as the Messiah. So that in Christ Jesus we become children of God through faith. In His family, there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, but rather we are all one in Christ Jesus. If we belong to Christ, then we are heirs according to His promise of salvation. And when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing it will be. Amen