Hope Of Israel Series

Hope of Israel

No matter where we find ourselves there is Hope

God knows our need for Hope

Witness of Hope

…from time to time a painting or picture will really speak a clear, strong message. There was a picture of an old burned-out mountain shack. All that remained was the chimney...the charred debris of what had been that family’s sole possession. In front of this destroyed home stood an old grandfatherly-looking man dressed only in his underclothes with a small boy clutching a pair of patched overalls. It was evident that the child was crying. Beneath the picture were the words which the artist felt the old man was speaking to the boy. They were simple words, yet they presented a profound theology and philosophy of life. Those words were, "Hush child, God ain’t dead!"

That vivid picture of that burned-out mountain shack, that old man, the weeping child, and those words "God ain’t dead" should remain in our mind. Instead of it being a reminder of the despair of life, it has come to be a reminder of hope! We need reminders that there is hope in this world. In the midst of all of life’s troubles and failures, we need mental pictures to remind us that all is not lost as long as God is alive and in control of His world. James DeLoach, associate pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Houston, quoted in When God Was Taken Captive, W. Aldrich, Multnomah, 1989, p. 24.

What wonderful hope we have today, as revealed throughout history to those who have been and will be faithful to God’s call in their lives.

No matter where we find ourselves there is Hope

I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. Romans 11:1

Israel was disobedient to God, gripped by unbelief.

They even rejected God’s own Son, Jesus Christ.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. John 1:11

How can this fact be reconciled with the fact that Israel is God’s people?

God had given birth to Israel through Abraham and had made some great promises to the nation through Abraham

ÞGod had even promised that He would never cast off His people: “For the LORD will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance” (Psalm 94:14).

God upholds HIS Word.

“Has God cast away His people?”

To “cast away” (apotheomai) means to push away, to thrust away, to repel, to repudiate. To utterly and totally and finally cast away.

Has God utterly cast away the Jews?

Paul shouts: “God forbid” (me genito). It is impossible! It must never be! It can never be!

God has not and will not break His Word to Israel.

God’s promises were intended for those who believed and obeyed Him. These have always been “His people.”

Paul himself the believer is proof, he is part of God’s remnant…as there is even today in Israel.

Paul was a pure Jew, a true descendant of Abraham, not a mere proselyte; and he was of the elite, of the Benjaminite aristocracy.

Paul was part of the remnant of God.

“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do” (Acts 9:5-6).

“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:7-9; cp. Romans 11:3-16).

Can you today claim those losses from your walk prior to Christ as gains in God today?

God knows our need for Hope

God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Romans 11:2

God’s knows all things, HE knows our need for “hope”.

“Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18).

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29).