Choice Of The Jews Defended Series

3:1

“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision?” Try to ignore the chapter division here. The flow of thoughts continues.

And understand that when he uses the term “Jew” here, Paul is using it

generically to include physical and true Jew. Macarthur adds to the question Paul poses, assuming Paul is answering a question that a good Jew might ask after reading the end of chapter 2. I quote him here:

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“If our Jewish heritage, our knowing and teaching the Mosaic law, and our following Jewish rituals such as circumcision do not make a Jew righteous before God, then, “what advantage” do we have? Why is it good to be a Jew?

Macarthur points out here a history of the Jewish people’s sufferings. I will abbreviate it, but I think it is a good idea to bring it in here, heightening the import of Paul’s question in 3:1. “Look at all we’ve gone through! What advantage do we have?” This they could well ask.

Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof says in response to some negative events in old Russia among the Jews there, words to the effect of, “God, you say we are the chosen people. Couldn’t you choose someone else for a while?”

Jewish history:

• Slaves in Egypt four hundred years.

• Wandering in a barren wilderness for forty years.

• Civil war divides the nation.

• The northern section of Israel captured by the Assyrians.

• The southern kingdom of Judah decimated by the Babylonians.

• After they regroup and rebuild they are conquered by Greece and their temple desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes.

• Conquered by Rome.

• Jewish babies slaughtered by Herod the Great.

• A.D. 70. Roman general Titus destroys Jerusalem, kills one million.

• 115 A.D. Emperor Hadrian kills half a million Jews.

• 380 A. D. Theodosius declares Jews to be an inferior race.

• For two centuries, Jews oppressed by Byzantine branch of the Empire.

• 628, Emperor Heroclitus banishes them from Jerusalem and tried to exterminate them.

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• 1096, Roman Catholic Crusades slaughter thousands of Jews on their way to Jerusalem, trampling them to death under their horses hooves. In the name of Jesus.

• 1254. All Jews banished from France.

• 1492. Expelled from Spain.

• 1496. Expelled from Portugal.

• 1818. Thousands massacred in the Ukraine.

• 1940s. Six million Jews exterminated.

No security for the Jews anywhere. But if Romans 2 is correct, they had no spiritual security either. They trusted all this time in a God they had rejected. They trusted in their circumcision, in their heritage, and perhaps even in their suffering.

What are we trusting in tonight? Our Christian heritage? Our church? Our water baptism? Our suffering? Persecution suffering is a norm for true Christians but the fact that one is suffering does not mean that that person has earned favor with God. Be very sure.

What advantage then, in being Jewish, if being Jewish means you have a law you cannot keep and will be punished for it? What advantage if you have a heritage you cannot claim? God had said to His people, “the Lord has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” “The Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His own possession.” “The people whom I formed for Myself, will declare My praise.”

And when they walked in obedience, such was the case. But when their hearts were hardened, as Pharaoh’s and Emperors after him, God showed He is no respecter of persons. Israel, except for a remnant, would perish like all the others.

Paul brings out later in the chapter that ultimately God has not abandoned His people. Ultimately all Israel will be saved. But the Israel

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which is according to the flesh will continue to endure unheard of misery in answer to its own prayer during the trial of Jesus: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” So it has been.

Let me pause here to speak about a great controversy that has arisen in the Christian Church regarding Israel. On the one hand the claim has been made that Israel exists no longer. The church is here now, and Israel is to be forgotten altogether. It is no more special than any other Middle Eastern nation. Loved, pitied, preached to, but written off of God’s program for the future.

On the other hand are those who swear by modern Israel and everything she does.

Historically there have been those who so hate the Jewish people as to rejoice in their sufferings, and add to those sufferings whenever they can. Conspicuous among the latter is the Roman Catholic system, which only recently has – at least publicly and outwardly – apologized for its attitude toward the Jew and Israel. The Crusades, the forced wearing of yellow stars to single them out as a cursed people (Hitler did not originate that) the silence during the Holocaust, the fostering of attitudes that have prejudiced a world against Jewish people, all atrocities to God, yet used of God to fulfill His own words against them.