Discovery #17: Understanding the full implications of the “blindness” of the Jews (Part #1)

Last time, I posed the question: Did God decide to sacrifice the Jews for the sake of the world simply because they rejected Jesus and crucified Him?  As we explore this question, we will also ask how God factored in the blindness of the Jews?

Were the Jews Really Blind to Jesus?

If you’ve been reading my past blogs, you are well aware that the answer is not a simple one. But if you want to fast-forward to what I believe is the correct answer, then “No,” God did not sacrifice His Chosen People because they rejected Jesus due to their blindness, even though it may appear that He did. There’s a well-known verse in Romans 8 that may help to set our perspective:

³⁸ Yes, I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, ³⁹ nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything else in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8: 38-39 NCV

The message I take from this verse is simple: I will most likely fail God in my love for Him, but He will never fail in His love for me. I think that basically summarizes the theme song of the Jews (and, perhaps, all of us). When we read the Old Testament, there is one story after another of the Jews disappointing God, and it doesn’t get any better in the New Testament. So, shall we judge the Jews by our standards or by God’s standards?

This question is extremely important to me because I believe that the story of the Jews is really the story of all of us. Let’s break it down. Looking at the story of the Jews, they are essentially “famous” for two huge failures:

Failure	Consequence
Their failure to keep the Law (stay true to God).	Their repeated loss of the land promised to them through Abraham, Jacob, and Moses
Their failure to recognize and accept Jesus.	The presumptive loss of their salvation (at least, according to everything we know from the New Testament).

Loss of the Promised Land?

Let’s begin with the first failure and ask: Will they lose their land permanently? What does your gut tell you? Well, the Apostle Paul had some pretty specific ideas on the subject.

Paul said:

God trusted the Jews with his teachings. ³ If some Jews were not faithful to him, will that stop God from doing what he promised? ⁴ No! God will continue to be true even when every person is false. Romans 3: 2b-4 NCV

Paul also said:

²⁹ God never changes his mind about the people he calls and the things he gives them. Romans 11: 29 NCV

The lesson is: God does not break His promises! Specifically, the promise to give the Jews a land they could call home was not conditional upon them doing anything! Over much of the Old Testament, God continually fulfilled His promise to the Jews by giving them their land, only to have them lose it again and again because they stopped trusting Him, following Him, and believing Him. Does that make God’s promise conditional? No. God’s promise to Abraham was not to give him the land “continually” (from a point in time) but to assign it to them “forever” (an allocation freed from any time restriction).

…the Lord said to Abram, “Look all around you—to the north and south and east and west. ¹⁵ All this land that you see I will give to you and your descendants forever.” Genesis 13: 14b-15 NCV 

What God meant was simple: He had reserved a home for His People that could never be taken from them. In John 14: 2-3 (NCV), Jesus said to His Jewish followers:

² There are many rooms in my Father’s house; I would not tell you this if it were not true. I am going there to prepare a place for you. ³ After I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may be where I am. 

Is it possible that “the place” Jesus was referring to was the forever land promised by God to their ancestors? One day, the earth, as we know it, will pass away. But the home God has prepared for His People will not. How do we know this? Because as the Apostle John records his vision of the new heaven, he writes:

¹² The city had a great high wall with twelve gates with twelve angels at the gates, and on each gate was written the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Revelation 21: 12 NCV 

The very gates of heaven are named after the 12 tribes of Israel. THIS is the land that God has promised His People forever. The place Jesus is preparing for all of us!

Lesson:  God has a reservation waiting for the Jews in heaven. The question is, which ones?

Loss of Salvation?

If God has named the very gates of heaven after each one of the 12 tribes of Israel, does that mean that only those Jews who have accepted Jesus will ever see them? The author of Hebrews didn’t think so (emphasis added is mine):

³³ Through their faith they (the great Jews of faith) defeated kingdoms. They did what was right, received God’s promises, and shut the mouths of lions… They were weak, and yet were made strong… Others were tortured and refused to accept their freedom so they could be raised from the dead to a better life… ³⁸ The world was not good enough for them!… ³⁹ All these people are known for their faith, but none of them received what God had promised (during their lifetime). ⁴⁰ God planned to give us (the Jews) something better so that they (the Gentiles) would be made perfect, but only together with us (the Jews). Hebrews 11: 33-40 NCV

There is a very interesting concept presented in this section of Hebrews. Did you catch it? When the author says, “none of them received what God had promised,” does that make you think something’s wrong? God keeps His promises! The only explanation is that God plans on keeping His promise to these men and women of faith at some point after their death! And the very next verse provides us with a clue: “God planned to give us (the Jews) something better so that they (the Gentiles) would be made perfect, but only together with us (the Jews).” The NLV version may clarify the author’s intent: “For God had something better in mind for us (the Jews), so that they (the Gentiles) would not reach perfection without us.” Do you see it? If God had only given Jesus to the Jews—and they accepted Him—only the Jews would benefit. By blinding the Jews from seeing Jesus (but only for a time), a much greater good was accomplished—the whole world had the opportunity to be saved! Billions of Gentiles (and Jews) have accepted Jesus over the 2,000+ years since His death (and resurrection). Thus, the world would not have reached “perfection” (salvation) were it not for the Jews, and that was the “something better” God had in mind—a much bigger family in heaven.

Despite what the author of Hebrews says, the concept persists that “The Jews got it wrong.” This point has (in my humble opinion) led to a rift between many Christians and Jews for centuries. Many Christians blame the Jews for crucifying Jesus and then wonder how the early Jewish converts—those who were there at the Pentecost and saw Jesus after His death—could have given Him up to the Gentiles. As Paul pointed out in Romans: “Did God throw out his people? No! I myself am an Israelite from the family of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. ² God chose the Israelites to be his people before they were born, and he has not thrown his people out. (Romans 11: 1-2 NCV). God did not throw His people out or abandon them simply because of their failings. If He had, we’d all be thrown out! All of us have failed God in some way. Thank the Lord for His amazing grace, where He sees me (and my Jewish brothers) for who we are and still accepts us.

“That’s all well and good,” you say, but “it does not account for all the generations of Jews that rejected Jesus. According to the Bible, they are not going to heaven.” On the surface, I’d have to agree that you are right. But my gut tells me something is missing from that conclusion and it has to do with a reward waiting for them “at some point after their death.”

            Two Amazing Sacrifices

In my book, I discuss God’s call for the Jews to BE examples of the type of people God wanted. Part of their call to BE was to learn how to honor God by giving up something dear to them and sacrificing it to God. Normally, when we think of the Jewish sacrifices, we think of the offerings made by the priests on their behalf. That’s not what I mean here. I think the Jews made one sacrifice they didn’t intend to make, and eventually, they will very deliberately make the ultimate sacrifice with 100% purpose and commitment.

• The unintended sacrifice will be the (temporary) loss of their honor. By rejecting Jesus, they allowed another people (the Gentiles) to be saved by accepting Jesus as their own. Granted, they did not all do this consciously, but God knew it would happen—and He may have helped it along some (Remember, at the time Paul wrote these words, Mary had just failed to recognize Jesus at the gravesite, and two of His disciples did not recognize Him on the road to Emmaus). Paul said God arranged this “in order to make the Jews jealous” of their Gentile brothers who will (for a time) have more honor than them. If that’s not a sacrifice for the Jews, I don’t know what is.
• The deliberate sacrifice will be their lives. I believe that when a portion of the Jews finally realize that Jesus was (and is) the Messiah, they will lament their loss of missing Him for so long. Then, they will lament all their brothers and sisters who lost their salvation because of their first sacrifice (their rejection of Jesus). This realization will lead these Jews to willingly sacrifice themselves for Jesus (and to save their people). How this last sacrifice will work is currently a mystery. But I think God has shown me an answer, which I reveal in my book and will share a preview in this blog.

The Time of the Jews and the Time of the Gentiles

Before we can understand the second sacrifice, there is one more critical point to understand. Let’s look at how Paul explained the plight of the Jews in Romans 11: 7-12 NCV  (Notes and emphasis are mine):

⁷ So this is what has happened: Although the Israelites tried to be right with God, they did not succeed, but the ones God chose (the Gentiles) did become right with him (by embracing Jesus). The others (the Jews) were made stubborn and refused to listen to God. ⁸ As it is written in the Scriptures:

“God gave the people (the Jews) a dull mind so they could not understand.” Isaiah 29:10

“He closed their eyes so they could not see
and their ears so they could not hear.
This continues until today.” Deuteronomy 29:4

⁹ And David says:

“Let their own feasts trap them and cause their ruin;
let their feasts cause them to stumble and be paid back.
¹⁰ Let their eyes be closed so they cannot see
and their backs be forever weak from troubles.” Psalm 69:22–23

¹¹ So I ask: When the Jews fell, did that fall destroy them? No! But their failure brought salvation to those who are not Jews (the Gentiles), in order to make the Jews jealous. ¹² The Jews’ failure brought rich blessings for the world (billions would be saved by accepting Christ), and the Jews’ loss (of Jesus) brought rich blessings for the non-Jewish people (Gentiles). So surely the world will receive much richer blessings when enough Jews become the kind of people God wants.

Basically, God knew that “their own feasts (would) trap them and cause their ruin.” At least part of the reason why the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah was because of disagreements they had with the Apostles about such things as circumcision, what food is clean, the role of the Temple and baptism. Yet, this was necessary so that the Gentiles would embrace Jesus and make Him their own. To the Gentiles, Jesus was too big a deal to be ignored! If God were going to save the whole world, He needed a people who could (and would) bring His message to all corners of the earth!  But what did Paul mean when he said, “the world will receive much richer blessings when enough Jews become the kind of people God wants?” Does this verse remind you of the one we read in Hebrews which said, “For God had something better in mind for us (the Jews), so that they (the Gentiles) would not reach perfection without us.” I think that is the key to what God has planned for the Jews! At Jesus’ coming, the first period (or “Time”) for the Jews ended and the “Time of the Gentiles” began.

Why? God’s plan here is twofold:

• Their blindness will enable the Gospel message to reach the whole world and save billions of people by allowing the Gentiles to “take the baton” and be responsible for evangelism.
• Their thirst for a Messiah will grow over time and as the world descends further away from God. I believe the result will be more Jews turning to God and praying for Him to send the Messiah. “When enough Jews become the kind of people God wants,” their fervent prayers will help precipitate the 2^nd coming of Jesus and the 2nd Time of the Jews.

Conclusion

This is what I think the Scriptures are teaching us:

• It was God’s plan to have the Gentiles bring the Gospel message of Jesus to the world.
• This plan required God’s Chosen People to reject Jesus and (for a while) to suffer the penalty of losing their salvation because of that rejection. Remember, “none of them received what God had promised” during their lifetime.
• But God will not hold this rejection against them forever (after all, it was not entirely their fault). And, from what we’ve studied, God’s promise will probably not be fulfilled until after their death.
• The key to understanding God’s plan lies in knowing what He does during the Tribulation.

Well, I think I have run out of my word allocation for this blog. I’ll pick up on this thought in the next edition.

Like what you read? Don’t miss the next edition! Subscribe to my posts.