“Thou Shalt Not Steal”
By Michael L. Brown

Most religious Jews thought, and still think, that Jew and Gentile will not be united in one spiritual family in this age. Paul received a revelation: Since the Messianic age began when Jesus died, rose and ascended to heaven, the universal spiritual family also began:
“For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy, as it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to Your name” (Ps. 18:49). Again it says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people” [Deut. 32:43]. And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to Him, all you peoples” [Ps. 117:1]” (Rom. 15:8-11).

This is so important! Paul found the “mystery of the Church” hidden in Old Testament passages that spoke of the Gentiles and Israel, not Israel alone. He didn’t simply take Israel’s precious promises and prophecies and say, “Now this means the Church!” No. He quoted Deuteronomy: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people.” Yet the largely Gentile Church has seemed to read these words as if they said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, in place of His people.”

Yes, Gentile believers, as well as Jewish believers, are the spiritual people of God. But all Jews are the natural people of God. And the Church has taken away God’s promises to the Jews.

What is one of the Church’s verses of protection?
“No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from Me,” declares the LORD (Is. 54:17).

Now, all believers have the right to apply this verse to themselves. The end of the passage makes that clear. The church as a whole can “claim” it. But no believer has the right to steal this promise from its rightful owner: Jerusalem!
Jerusalem? Yes! The promise starts in verse 11: “O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will build you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with sapphires.” God is speaking to a city. “If anyone does attack you, it will not be My doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you (54:15).
Although the word “city” does not occur in the Hebrew of Isaiah 54, the recipient of these comforting words is addressed throughout in the feminine because “city” in Hebrew is feminine!

Here is another verse the Church has stolen:
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you (Is. 49:15).
Thank God for His faithfulness. He will not forget us! Neither will He forget the original recipient of this promise: Zion!
“But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me, the LORD has forgotten me’” (49:14). God says absolutely not: “See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands, your walls are ever before me” (49:16). He’s talking to a city again! (The Hebrew is feminine, too.)

Of course, Zion doesn’t refer only to the literal city of David. It represents the nation as whole. As “mother Jerusalem” went, so went the nation. That much is understood. And in a secondary sense, Zion can apply to all the people of God. But as people of God, let’s be godly people. “Thou shalt not steal,” He says. It is enough that the Church can embrace these glorious promises and partake in their nourishing sap. Why try to steal them entirely? How does that benefit the Church? Can’t believers be secure enough to share?

In Isaiah 60: 1-2, the prophet says:
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORTD rises upon you and His glory appears over you.”
What a precious word! But who is being addressed? That’s right; it’s Zion again! (And, you guessed it, the Hebrew is feminine once more.)
Foreigners will rebuild your walls…Your gates will always stand open…The sons of your oppressors will coming down before you; all you despise you will bow down at your feet and will call you the City of the LORD, Zion of the Holy One of Israel (60: 10,11,15).
How Jerusalem needs these words!

Isaiah 62 is another classic chapter. In it the prophet pledges unceasing intercession. He will not give up in prayer. Who is he praying for?
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch (62:1).
Go ahead and apply this to the Church and to the heavenly Mount Zion; just don’t rob her earthly partner!
“I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth (62:6-7).
That is something worth praying for!

There is a promise for Zion’s land:
“No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah [My delight is in her] and your land Beulah [Married]… (62:4).

There is a promise for Zion’s people:
“The will be called the Holy people, the Redeemed of the LORD…(62:12).

And there is a promise for Zion herself:
“…and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted (62:12).

If Zion primarily means the Church, then where is Zion’s land, what are its walls, and who are its people? We can make all the spiritual application we want. All believers have a spiritual right to the promises. But we must remember – they are literally true for Zion! Jerusalem’s restoration will be glorious.

Isaiah 41:10 is another beloved Scripture:
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
This time the Hebrew is masculine. The Lord is not speaking to the city. He’s speaking here to the people!
“But you, O Israel, My servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you descendants of Abraham My friend, I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you; I said, ‘You are My servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you…” (41:8-10)
That’s the only reason the Jews are still here!

Let me speak now as a Jewish believer to My Gentile brothers. We are willing to share these promises with you. But please, save them for our natural brothers. They need them too! Soon they’ll be grafted back in.

So the Church has broken the eighth commandment. The devil has broken it too. By convincing many believers that the promises for Israel no longer apply to the physical people, he has robbed these believers blind. They are unable to see the greatest fulfilment of prophecy in almost 2000 years: the restoration of national Israel! Who would have thought it possible?

The fact that the Jews have even survived this long is an outstanding miracle. No people have ever been completed displaced from its land and continued to exist for centuries as a distinct people. In spite of incredible odds, the Jews have done this. (Or, to put it more accurately, God has done this for the Jews.) But there is an even greater miracle than that. Not only have the Jews survived as a people, but after centuries of wandering, they have also returned to their ancestral homeland and made it their own country again. The Bible said it would happen.
What the prophets spoke is literally true! And who would have believed that the language being spoken in this resurrected nation would again be Hebrew? Our God is an awesome God.

When Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied that their people would come out from Babylon and from the rest of the nations where they were scattered, these prophets were referring to the Jewish exile of their day. But their words were never fulfilled. Only some of the exiles returned, and their return was anything but glorious. The majority of Jews remained scattered throughout the world, and in every generation the dispersion increased. Now, over the last 100 years, with amazing parallels to the restoration of the Church, God has said, “It’s time!” Jews returned to the Land from Sweden, Belgium, Britain, Holland, Germany, Poland, France, Switzerland, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Aden, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Russia – to name just the closest nations! This is the hand of God.

At this very time the gospel is being preached around the earth. Isaiah declared that in the day the nations rally to the Root of Jesse,
“…the Lord will reach out His hand a second time to reclaim the remnant [of His people] that is left from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush [Ethiopia; remember the Ethiopian Jews?], from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth” (Is. 11:10-12).

How similar this is to Romans 11: 25-26! As God is reaping the world harvest of the Gentile (“nations” in the Hebrew), He is regathering Israel’s exiles from across the globe. We are living in that “day.”

Some Christians argue, “But the Jews returned to the Land in unbelief and the Law said they must first repent. So the modern state of Israel cannot be the fulfilment of prophecy.

But that is only part of what the Scriptures say. According to the Word, if the Jewish people, scattered throughout the world, would turn to God in repentance, the Lord would bring them back to their land (Deut. 30). Because they did not repent as a nation, they were without a homeland for over nineteen centuries. But a time comes when God says, “Enough!” A time comes when He must act for His own name’s sake, when He cannot hold back any longer.
“…This is what the Sovereign LORD says: “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations…For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean…I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh…I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign LORD. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, O house of Israel (Ezek. 36:22-32).

The physical restoration comes first, but not because of Israel’s deeds. The spiritual restoration follows, once they are again in the Land.
“The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual” (1 Cor. 15:46).
The natural has already come; the spiritual will surely follow.

Do you see the devil’s strategy? He has robbed many Christians of the natural so that they will not believe God for the spiritual. When the Lord performed the greatest miracle of modern times, restoring the nation of Israel – using human means in the process, as He always does – the devil was right there to say, “That’s not a miracle! That’s not God! That’s just a natural political development.” How Satan hates what God does! I’m sure he was whispering the same lies in the ears of many exiled Jews when Cyrus said they could return home in 538 B.C.E. “It’s just politics! Don’t give the glory to God. And what’s wrong with Babylon anyway?”

Today, when a supernatural exodus is taking place out of what was formerly the Soviet Union and Russian Jews are flooding into Israel, when Jeremiah’s prophecy of an exodus greater than the exodus from Egypt (Jer. 16:14-15; 23:7-8) is approaching fulfilment, the devil is really screaming. “This has nothing to do with the Bible!”

Why is he getting so desperate? Well, the devil always seeks to quench our faith.. He constantly tries to deny the works of the Lord and to convince us they are not real. He’ll do this with every genuine miracle every time one occurs. He always has an anti-supernatural explanation! But when it comes to Israel, Satan is really scrambling. The stakes are infinitely higher.

It was easier for him to deny God’s promises to the Jewish people before 1948. Before then, it was not as hard for him to mislead the Church into thinking that it had replaced natural Israel. But once the nation was physically was reborn it became more difficult. And Satan knows what’s coming. There is a tremendous battle of faith immediately ahead. It is for the salvation of the Jewish people. The faith-filled prayers of the Church are essential.

Now stop and think for a moment: We have reason to be encouraged; so the enemy is trying to discourage us. God said that the nation of Israel would have a physical rebirth. That has happened, just as He said! He spoke of the places from which He would regather His scattered people. That is happening, just as He said! And He promised that when He brought His people back into the Land, they would have a spiritual rebirth too. That will happen, just as He said! As surely as Israel exists, Israel will be saved.

The Lord is raising His voice and shouting, “My children, believe My Word!” Satan is screeching hysterically, “Don’t believe it, it’s not the Word!” And just why is the devil trying so frantically to steal our faith for the salvation of the Jewish people? He knows exactly why.
Do we?

(Source: Our Hands are Stained with Blood – Michael L. Brown, Destiny Image)

<<<

“Thou Shalt Not Steal” By Michael L. Brown

“Thou Shalt Not Steal”
By Michael L. Brown