Life from death

[AI translation] As many of us know, our Synod Council has made this day, the second Sunday of Advent, a Sunday of Jewish mission. It has called upon the congregations that this morning's sermon should be about our mission, and especially about our duty and obligation to the Jewish mission. I would like to begin this sermon with two preliminary announcements. One is that we should try to distance ourselves from politics, especially the politics of the day. As the people of the Word, the church of Christ, let us listen to the teaching of the Word. I am well aware that whoever speaks today on the Jewish question is walking on very delicate and slippery ground. There are many painful memories, bitterness and suffering attached to this issue. It is very difficult to overcome all this and to look at the whole issue from a higher perspective for someone who carries unhealed, aching wounds in his soul because of this very issue. Yet let us now try to rise above the politics of the day, above all the pain and bitterness. Let us try to see this issue as God sees it and teaches it in His Word! Let us try to do this, if only because we will find no cure for our spiritual wounds in this matter anywhere else in the world, but in God's eternal Word alone!My other announcement is this: let us remember that we are Christians here in the church now, and not Jews. So God's message is not for the Jews present, but for the Christians present. It would be wrong to say things that Jews should hear as a warning from God for their own edification. As much as we would like to, we do not want to hear God's message now as if it is for others, because He is speaking to us in this church. So let us listen to His teaching, even if it is a more uncomfortable task for us, and a more unpopular one for the preacher.
I would now like to briefly outline the place and role of the people of Israel in salvation history as it is traced throughout the Bible, the revelation of God's plan of salvation. We see three eras quite clearly here.
First, the period of Israel's election. Immediately after the Fall in Paradise, God promised the first human couple that He would send One who would redeem man from his misery and deliver him from Satan's bondage. However, man's original, direct knowledge of God, once out of Paradise and thus out of God's immediate presence, became increasingly obscured, and he became more and more immersed in the idolatry and polytheism of the paganism that was thus developing. Thus the faith in the one true God and in the promised Saviour to come would have been entirely forgotten and confused had not God Himself seen to its preservation, its transmission from father to son, from generation to generation. That is why God chose first pious men, and then a whole people, to illustrate and demonstrate his plan of salvation for all mankind. The purpose of the selection was, therefore, to maintain the knowledge and worship of the one true God on earth and to spread the good news of the coming redemption among the nations. Thus God's choice fell on the Jewish people. Not that they were superior to others in physical or spiritual endowments or in their peoplehood, but precisely because of their smallness and inadequacy. It was that God's grace might be the more manifest. So that no flesh or nation should boast before the Lord! When a man wants to pick up a gold chain lying in the mud, he must take hold of one of the links. No matter which one he chooses. He shall then pull the whole out of the mud by the link thus grasped. Israel was the link in the chain of the people who had fallen into sin, by which God wanted to pull the whole chain out of the mud. That was the purpose of the election. In the fullness of time, the long-awaited Deliverer, the promised Saviour, finally came in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But the majority of the Jewish people did not recognise in him their Saviour. They turned against Him, rejected Him, and in so doing brought upon themselves a terrible curse.
Thus began the second age, which continues to this day. Externally, situationally, this age is characterized by the scattering of the Jewish people in a sea of other peoples. Internally, spiritually, in the words of the Word, by hardening! This single word, hardening, explains much of the characteristic behaviour of the Jewish people, of the way in which it was situated among the nations. Hardening against the Anointed of God, Jesus Christ, against the redemption of repentance and forgiveness of sins, against the atoning blood, against the Saviour in general and His Church! But this hardening of Judaism and its withdrawal from the Church of Christ is, according to the Word, only partial and temporary! Partial, for there is now, and always will be, a remnant according to election by grace. In this present age of hardening, there are always, and will be more and more, those who recognize in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with astonished adoration. With joyful humility they give their hearts and their whole lives to Him.
But the hardening of the Jews to Christ is only temporary. It lasts until the fullness of the Gentiles, according to the Word, enters into salvation. It is God's mysterious provision to use the hardening of Israel to bring the Gentiles, the other nations, to the gospel, God's plan of salvation for the redemption of mankind. While walking in Sárospatak, I saw two long lines of students arriving at the gates of the college boarding school from two directions at the same time. One group had to stop and wait until all the boys in the other line had gone in before them, and then they could follow. Something like this is described by Paul: "the hardening of Israel was only partial, until the fullness of the Gentiles had come in" (Rom 11,25) Or, in Paul's analogy, "some branches were broken off, but you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them and became part of the root of the olive tree". (Rom 11,17) In other words, in place of the branches of the olive tree which were broken off, God grafted the branches of the wild olive tree into the trunk of the olive tree, so that they too might become partakers of the life-giving sap of the trunk. So the gentiles and other peoples were grafted by faith into the spiritual trunk of the Old Testament and the prophets, from which the branches of the Jewish people were broken off precisely because of their stumbling at Jesus. Through Israel's disobedience, the rest of the nations became the happy partakers of the fulfilled promises that the people of the Old Testament and their prophets had proclaimed. We have been spiritually grafted into the place from which the unyielding part of Israel before Christ was cut off!
After the fullness of the Gentiles has gone in, that is, after God has gathered into His Church all those of the Gentiles whom He wanted and chose, then the third age in Israel's history begins: the age of re-taking, the age of salvation. The apostle Paul refers to this in these words. For if thou hast been grafted out of the wild olive tree according to nature, and hast grafted me into the gentle olive tree contrary to nature: how much more shall these who are according to nature be grafted into their own olive tree." (Rom 11:23-24) And even this promise is connected with it, "So all Israel will be saved" (Rom 11:26a) So God has a plan for Judaism! His plan is to mature them through much adversity to accept Christ the Savior. God wants all peoples - including the Jewish people - to repent and live! Often repeated in Scripture is the prophecy that God will gather the scattered Israel back together again, and gather them around the blessedly recognized Saviour. Thus the great prodigal son will return once more to his ancestral father's house! This will be the final, the one and only, and the true solution of all acute Jewish questions!
The curse which the people of Israel took upon themselves in the court of the high priest, when they cried, "His blood is upon us and upon our offspring" (Mt 27:26), can only be wiped away, taken away from them, by the same holy blood, the blood of Christ. Only the same Christ can gather them together again, Whose rejection caused them to be scattered among all the peoples of the world. Nor will there be rest for the Jews from the Gentiles, and the Gentiles from the Jews, until both meet in Christ, in Whom there is no more Jew, Gentile, lord, servant, male and female, but all are equally pardoned sinners! There is one happy, decisive, Christian experience that all pardoned sinners have had: When two people meet in Christ, no matter how opposite they may have come from, they can no longer be enemies! They have become brothers and sisters in whom Christ the Saviour has broken down the dividing walls through repentance, forgiveness, conversion and regeneration. He has made peace between them for mutual love and service!
What we must see clearly is that apart from Christ, the two tribes, as the Bible calls them, are in an unceasing warfare with each other. In this struggle, terrible wounds are being inflicted on both sides, which only deepen the gulf. Do you know who will win in this battle? Not the one who can hit harder. Not the one who can hate and take revenge more, but the one who can love more. The only way to stop the avalanche of mutual revenge is to stop it from swelling to ever more horrific proportions. By starting to forgive and love even when the other would do the opposite! To forgive and love even one's enemies: a Christ thing! Only one who has become a new creation in Christ can do it. There is no doubt, therefore, about the part from which the initiative of forgiveness and love must come!
The attitude towards the Jews is expressed in a very practical way by the Apostle Paul: "Because of their case, salvation has become the Gentiles', so that they may be stirred up" (Rom 11,11). This is a huge missionary task, both to the Jew and to all non-Christians. It means that the life of the Christian man should be neither offensive nor alarming, but so attractive and desirable that all non-Christians will be inspired and encouraged to live in Christ! That they may desire Christ from you! So that your happy faith in Christ may spread to those who do not know Him! So that those who have rejected Jesus may be convinced by your life that Jesus is truly God the Saviour!
Now, we here should not be hurt by the sins of the Jews, because it never brings a solution to be sorry for the sins of others. To reveal the sins of the Jews and to make them pain the souls of the Jews: this is one of the tasks of the Jewish mission! God is now sending us a message, and He is sending us a message to look upon that people as the prodigal son whom God is waiting for to come home, as a people who must come to submission to Christ! So let us not hinder this majestic advance of God's plan of salvation! Let us, on the contrary, promote it by prayer, by example, by holy missionary responsibility! "For if their adoption is the reconciliation of the world, what shall their reception be but life from the dead?" (Rom 11,15) - i.e. reconciled, new life from the death of mutual hatred, through common faith in a common Saviour!
Amen.
Date: 5 December 1948.