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Take heed
therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the
Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which
he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my
departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the
flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse
things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and
remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn
every one night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you
to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up,
and to give you an inheritance among all them which are
sanctified. Acts 20:28-32.
Part
I
by Emerson A. Wilson
The Father Of
The Faithful
We learned in the previous message (Grass
Roots Of The Church) that Abraham plays a particular part in
"the Church", but he also plays a particular part in Christiandom.
Probably no life, outside of Jesus Christ Himself, means so much to
religion as does Abraham. In some cases, Abraham means more to some
religious folks than Christ does. He holds a high and prominent
place in God's plan of salvation and His bringing forth of "the
Church", but we want to see exactly what place he fills.
The
Muhammadans look up to Abraham. Those who follow Muhammadanism trace
their origin to Abraham through Ishmael, the son of Haggar, the
bondwoman. The literal Jews look to fleshly Abraham as the founder
of their faith and as the head of their race. True Christianity
recognizes Abraham as the father of the faithful, and I could go on
naming various religions where Abraham holds a high position. My
friend, because of not realizing his true position, many are led
away from the real truth that would set them free and give them an
experience with God.
In the previous message, we learned that
a new and important era of human history commenced in Abraham's day.
Until that time, God had dealt with the whole world, but from the
day that God called Abraham out, every promise in the Bible is
written ONLY to Abraham's seed. It is so necessary that we learn
this. If we can understand this, we can see now foolish people are
to follow the ways and teachings of man. There is no promise for any
followers of mankind. There is no promise for any followers of ANY
man. Since that is a fact and since God's dealings are virtually
confined to Abraham's posterity, it is needful that we understand
who his posterity really is.
There are people who will not
even think about Christians being Abraham's seed because they have
it so indelibly stamped in their minds that Abraham's seed are the
literal Jews. Every time they go to claim a promise or a blessing,
they say, "That's just for Abraham's seed," and they begin to preach
and teach about millenniums and future ages which will never come.
It all comes because they do NOT know who the seed of Abraham is
today.
God Fulfilled His
Promise
Let us read Genesis 13:15-17, please. For
all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy
seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so
that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed
also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it
and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto
thee.
My friends, Abraham had two seeds. One was the
fleshly seed, here spoken of as the dust of the earth. The flesh, or
outer man, is made from the dust of the earth, and this promise was
of a fleshly inheritance. This promise was to that seed which would
be as the dust of the earth. The promise was the land of Canaan,
every bit of it. So, Abraham was to bring forth a fleshly seed which
would produce a fleshly people who would produce the fleshly seed of
Abraham, which finally developed into what we call Israel (the
literal Jew). God's promise to the fleshly seed was the land of
Canaan, a fleshly promise.
Now let us read Genesis 15:18,
which tells us, In the same day the Lord made a covenant with
Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river
of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: From Egypt
to Euphrates was what God had promised the fleshly seed of Israel.
In II Chronicles 9:26, we read that through Solomon, God fulfilled
every part of this promise which He had promised to Abraham's
fleshly seed; Solomon reigned from Egypt to the Euphrates. They had
fully received the promise which God had given to those fleshly
descendants.
This makes liars out of a lot of radio preachers
(and televangelists) who are teaching that God still owes the
literal Jew something, that He has not yet fully fulfilled His
promise to them. Before Joshua died, he said, And, behold, this
day I am going the way of all the earth: and ye know in all your
hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all
the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all
are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed
thereof. Joshua 23:14.
Someone might ask, "If that is so,
why aren't the fleshly Jews in the land of Canaan now? Why are they
scattered all around the world?" My friends, there were terms to
God's covenants. Just mark it down, the individual who tries to
teach that God has any unconditional covenants is telling you
a LIE! It is FALSE teaching! THERE IS NOT A PROMISE IN THE BIBLE
WITHOUT A CONDITION; if you do NOT meet that condition, you do not
get to claim that promise! Oh, you may have already received a
promise and been blessed by it, but when you fail to meet the terms
of that covenant, you lose your hold on the blessing that God has
given you!
God entered into a covenant with Abraham that He
would give his fleshly seed the land of Canaan, but there were terms
to that covenant. Someone might say, "The Bible says that He gave it
to them forever." Well, He gave them that land forever just as He
gives you eternal life forever. As far as God is concerned, He has
given it to you forever. However, if you FAIL to meet the terms of
that covenant, you lose it. Everything that God does for us, so far
as HE is concerned, IS FOREVER. Oh yes, Jesus did indeed come to
bring EVERLASTING life.
False teachers will tell you that if
you were ever saved, you can never be lost, but again, there are
TERMS to the covenant. Even though God gave it to you forever, just
as He entered into that covenant with Abraham, your part has to be
carried out. There ARE terms to salvation.
Nowhere in the
Bible can anyone read that God gave them the land without some
conditions to meet. That land was given to them on terms! When God
gave it to them, He gave it to them for forever, but whether they
stayed there forever depended on whether they kept the terms of the
covenant. It is a type of salvation: you only have salvation as long
as you meet the terms of it!
Forget NOT The
Lord
Let's turn to Deuteronomy 8:11, and read. This
is where God began to lay down the terms of enjoying the land of
Canaan forever: Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in
not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his
statutes... We are living in a time when too many people have
forgotten God. They say, "I haven't forgotten God; He is ever in my
memory." How do you forget God? When you fail to keep His
commandments and live according to His statutes.
Verses 18-20
of that same Chapter tell us: But thou shalt remember the Lord
thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he
may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is
this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy
God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I
testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the
nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye
perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord
your God.
Let us turn to the 30th Chapter of Deuteronomy
to see how they lost the land and for what length of time they lost
it. Verses 17-20 tell us: But if thine heart turn away, so that
thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods,
and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely
perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land,
whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven
and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you
life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that
both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the Lord thy
God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest
cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days:
that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give
them.
God was warning them to be VERY careful. Why?
Because you CAN lose what you have gained. The covenant is only
ratified and real on terms. What are the terms? You MUST hear His
voice--you MUST obey Him. God has NOT changed, not throughout the
Old Testament nor in the New! No, no! I realize that we receive
spiritual blessings now through Christ, but the covenant is just the
same. A stern warning was given to the literal Jew--a condition
imposed to remain in the land that God had promised
them.
They Broke The
Covenant
Heaven and earth bear witness that they broke
the covenant. They rebelled against God and they were driven out of
the land. Never, never--not in their day or in any age to come--to
return by God's leadership. When they broke the covenant, God put
great punishment on them, and that punishment is still being imposed
on the literal Jew today.
In Deuteronomy 28:15, God began to
talk about their punishment. Now pause for a moment there in Chapter
28, and look at verses 1-14. Please NOTE: God listed the blessings
they would receive IF they followed after Him, FIRST, didn't He? In
verses 1 and 2, He told them: And it shall come to pass, if thou
shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to
observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this
day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations
of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and
overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy
God. He then listed blessing after blessing, covering every
conceivable circumstance, every nuance of their lives. It is in
verse 15, But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken
unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his
commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that
all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: then
He began to warn them of impending punishment if they turned away
from Him. Verse 25 reads, The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten
before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and
flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the
kingdoms of the earth.
There will be those hearing the
sound of my voice, or reading these words who will ask, "Why even
bring up the literal Jews? Why should I care whether they go
to Jerusalem or not?" My friends, unless we understand this history,
if we cannot comprehend what took place between the literal Jews and
God, we will never get an understanding (revelation) of who the seed
of Abraham is TODAY. Thank God, Abraham still has a seed, yet today,
who are to receive the promises of God, yet unlike the days when
Abraham lived, those are no longer restricted to the literal
(fleshly) Jew! The reason people cannot see "the Church" today is
because they have their minds blocked with the idea that the
literal Jew is God's chosen people! My friend, there is NOT
an ounce of truth in it! Let us go back to the Bible. The big end of
the teachings and prophecies that is going forth on the airways
today is a bunch of GARBAGE! There is NO truth in it!
You
won't have to go many days until someone brings up some religious
subjects, and they will ask, "What do you think about the Jewish
nation?" They will then follow their question, [usually despite any
answer you give them] with this: "Well, you can know for sure, they
will win. They may get pushed a little, but they will win because
they are God's people and God fights for them." That is one hundred
percent CONTRARY to what the Word of God says!
In Verse 25 of
Deuteronomy 28 that God told them: The Lord shall cause thee to
be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against
them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all
the kingdoms of the earth. Where, I ask you, are the Jews today?
Scattered all the way around the earth, to every kingdom of the
earth. Folks still insist, "Oh, there will come a day when they will
return to Israel." The very thought is foolish. I am here to tell
you, there will be NO temple built in Jerusalem. There will be no
returning of the Jews to Jerusalem. My friend, God has dispersed
them to every kingdom around the world, and they will be a dispersed
people until Jesus comes again!
Someone might ask, "Do you
think that is merciful?" Well, God gave them a promise of the land,
and He fulfilled that promise. Nowhere in the Bible did He promise
to give it to them a second or third or fourth time! They have
fallen under the punishment from having turned away from God! They
WILLFULLY broke the covenant and became heirs of the curse, just as
Deuteronomy 28 teaches us.
Irretrievable
Judgment
"Isn't there a chance for them?" Let's turn to
Ezekiel, Chapter 16 and read. Start right there at verse 1 and begin
your study. When you get to verse 55, note what it says: When thy
sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former
estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former
estate, then thou and thy daughters shall return to your former
estate. When the Jews broke their covenant with God, they
brought upon themselves irretrievable judgment. They were put into
the same scale as Sodom. Is there any hope of Sodom coming back to
her former estate? No! She was destroyed with eternal fire (fire,
which destroyed her forever), or irretrievable judgment. So has the
literal Jew. You can just as much look for Sodom and her daughters
to come back to their former estates as to look for literal Israel
to come back to her former estate, back to the land of
Canaan.
Go on now and read verses 56-59 of that same chapter:
For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of
thy pride, Before thy wickedness was discovered, as at the time of
thy reproach of the daughters of Syria, and all that are round about
her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise thee round
about. Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith
the Lord. For thus saith the Lord God; I will even deal with thee as
thou hast done, which hast despised the oath in breaking the
covenant.
God was saying to the Jews, "You have broken
the covenant. You had no respect for Me. You did not care a bit
about your nakedness and lewdness (speaking of spiritual matters
there). You flirted around with other gods and idols of every kind,
and let Me stand, forgotten. You paid no attention to Me. Now I'm
going to give you what you gave Me. From now on, I have no respect
for you as a people, as a nation."
Still, someone might ask,
"Why would God give them another chance? Why wouldn't He bring them
back? It seems awfully hard of Him." Here's THE answer:
Because the LITERAL (fleshly, carnal) Jew was NEVER God's
plan. Think about it now! His plan, in finality, was to have a
chosen people--chosen because of their salvation through His Only
Begotten Son, Jesus Christ! The "group" or "nation" known as Israel
was just a type and shadow which had to pass away.
What about
the Messaiaic promises? What about those deep promises that God
promised Abraham, that through him (his seed) all families of the
earth would be blessed? Well, EVERY messianic promise that God
promised through the Messiah is STILL IN EFFECT. Even though Israel
broke her vows to God, God still keeps "His end" of the deal! Nobody
can charge God with breaking His vows or His Word. His Word STILL
stands!
The Old Covenant Is
Void
Even though the promises to literal Israel
were nullified and are no longer in effect, God still had mercy and
achieved His purpose in a different manner. Ezekiel 16: 60-62 tells
us, Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the
days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting
covenant. Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when
thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I
will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant. And
I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I
am the Lord. Here the Lord let us know that He is going to
establish an everlasting covenant. Do you know how/what it
was?
What have we learned thus far? God gave Israel
everything He promised them, on condition, but they failed to keep
His set terms. God told them when He gave them the covenant that if
they failed to keep the terms, they would be just like any other
people to Him. Christians, that is good for us to think about! We
can "hang around" the Church so long that we get to thinking we ARE
God's privileged people. We are God's privileged people ONLY as
we obey His Word and keep His commandments! That is what got
Israel into trouble with God: they thought, as do many today, that
they were eternally secure. They thought they could live like the
devil and still have God's blessing, but they learned differently.
It happened unto them for OUR example--that we might learn that God
means what He says!
Even though He cut literal Israel off
under an irretrievable judgment, I am not saying that there is no
hope for any literal Jew! I am saying that so far as a nation is
concerned, God is through working with them. EACH individual is
another situation, as we will find out a bit later. So God dropped
that old covenant; He is not going to ever work with them any more
concerning that covenant. According to Ezekiel 16:60, however, He is
going to make an everlasting covenant with
them.
New Covenant
Let's now turn to Jeremiah
31:31-34 and read. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the
house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of
the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith
the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in
their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man
his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from
the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I
will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no
more.
The words "covenant" and "testament" mean the same
thing. In the first part of your Bible is the Old Testament or
OLD Covenant. The second part of your Bible is the New
Testament or NEW Covenant. In Luke 22, verses 19 and 20, we
hear Jesus, in His own words: And he took bread, and gave thanks,
and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is
given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup
after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood,
which is shed for you. He was ratifying the new covenant with
mankind that God had said would come forth.
Now turn to
Romans 4 and let's read verses 13-16: For the promise, that he
should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed,
through the law, but through the RIGHTEOUSNESS OF FAITH. For
if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the
promise made of none effect: Because the law worketh wrath: for
where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of
faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be
sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to
that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us
all.
It is here that we can begin to understand that one
of the promises which God made, 'way back then, to Abraham, was
indeed for ALL mankind! As far as God's part is concerned, it was
not just made to those who were under the LITERAL LAW. If it had
been meant for them and them only, Paul said, the promise could not
be that all families could be blessed, or that he would be heir of
the whole world.
Another
Promise
Now, we must study into the
thing a little deeper to see if God didn't make another promise to
Abraham, besides the one that promised his fleshly seed the land of
Canaan. We can find this promise in Genesis, Chapter 17. Abram was
seventy-five years old when God spoke about the first covenant of
giving Abraham's physical seed the land of Canaan. In Chapter 17,
Abraham is 95 years old, and God makes another promise to him:
And when Abram was ninety years old and
nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the
Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make
my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee
exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him,
saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou
shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more
be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of
many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding
fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come
out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee
and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting
covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
Genesis 17:1-7.
When Israel
failed in the first covenant, God said that He would make an
everlasting one. Did you ever notice that when He speaks of
Abraham's seed that was going to receive the fleshly promise of the
land of Canaan, He speaks of them as the dust of the earth? In
Genesis 15, we can see how He spoke to him in the second covenant.
Abraham was getting quite old and had not had a child yet, so he
began to question God. That's understandable: 20 years had passed
since God had promised to make Abraham a father--quite a LONG time
seeing as to how quickly we begin to question God when He doesn't
"come through" as we expect Him to, Amen? We rarely give Him 20
minutes, forget 20 years!
And Abram said, Behold, to me
thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.
And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall
not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own
bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and
said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to
number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. Genesis
15:3-5.
Everybody who studies the Bible knows that Paul and
all the apostles set literal Israel against spiritual Israel,
telling how spiritual Israel is above. Abraham, through Isaac, had a
fleshly outgrowth of many, many millions. In the same picture, I
want you to realize that God gave Abraham another covenant--that he
was going to bring forth a spiritual seed. Here He told Abraham to
"look now toward heaven and tell the stars..." (count the
stars)
 
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