Did God Really Say the Church Replaces Israel?

And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in. God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree. Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved as it is written.

The deliverer will come from Zion. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. This will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

The reading now is from Matthew 21:1-16. Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go to the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them, and he will send them at once. This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet saying, say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and He sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before Him and that followed Him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. And when He entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up saying, who is this? And the crowd said, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. And He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant. And they said to Him, do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes.

Have you never read? Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. And I would like to continue reading from the book of Matthew chapter 21, but we will jump to verse 23.

And sorry. In our moving from one house to the other somewhere, I lost my big print Bible, so I will read from my phone. And when He was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him as He was teaching and said, by what authority doest thou these things? And who gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask you one question, which if you tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men? And they reasoned within themselves saying, if we say from heaven, He will say unto us, why then did you not believe him? And if we say from men, we fear the multitude, for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered Jesus and said, we know not. And He also said unto them, neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.

But what think ye? A man has two sons, and he comes to the first and says, son, go work today in the vineyard. And he answered and said, I will not. But afterwards, he repented himself and went. And he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir, and went not.

Which of the two did the will of his father? And they said, the first. Jesus said to them, verily, I say unto you that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and you believed him not, but the publicans and the harlots believed him. And you, when you saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterwards that you might believe him.

Hear another parable. There was a man that was a householder who planted a vineyard and set a hedge about it and digged a winepress in it and built a tower and let it out to husbandmen and went to another country. And when the season of fruits drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen to receive his fruits. And the husbandmen took his servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first, but they did unto them in like manner.

But afterwards, he sent unto them his son saying, they will reverence my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among themselves, this is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance. And they took him and cast him forth out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do unto those husbandmen?

They said unto him, he will miserably destroy those miserable men and will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen who shall render him the fruits in their season. Jesus said to them, did you never read in the scriptures, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner? This was from the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Therefore, I say unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

And he that falls on this stone shall be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter them as dust. And when the chief priests and Pharisees heard this parable, they perceived that He spake of them. And when they sought to lay hold on Him, they feared the multitudes because they took Him for a prophet. And I wish to look especially this morning at verse 43. Therefore, say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and shall be given to a nation that brings forth the fruits thereof.

And the sermon is entitled, did God really say that the church replaces Israel? Now I was hoping to start a new series here, did God really say? And this series, I don't know if I will get a chance to do much more preaching here with hopefully new help coming, but it reminds us of the time when Satan came to Eve and said, did God really say you can't eat of any of the trees in the garden? And you see Satan's ploy here was to go further than God has gone, to ridiculous extremes so that we have to come back and defend it, and hopefully we will, in defending it, go to the other extreme, and then Satan has got us where he wants us.

And so there are a number of issues where Satan challenges us to go further than God's word demands. And one of these issues, I think, concerns the matter of how the Jews were replaced at the time that Jesus made this statement that the kingdom would be taken away from them and given to others. Yes. Jesus is king, but whose king? And I expect you will answer, He's our king.

Hallelujah. Yes. Our Lord reigns at the right hand of God, and we confess that as a church. But not all who identify as Christians will follow you here because there's a lot of confusion on this point. There are those who see Christ's reign not as a present reality, but only as a future event, an event that will happen once God's church, as we know it, is taken up into heaven, and a time when there will be persecutions that will then bring the Jewish nation back to God so that after seven years of persecution, the raptured church and Christ together will return to earth to rule from Jerusalem over a new nation, Israel.

And as David's offspring, Christ will rule there for one thousand years. And the church as the bride of Christ will rule with Him as queen. Now people who hold these views, they accuse us of what they call replacement theology, that we claim that Gentiles have now taken the place of the Jews. The Jews have been replaced, and Israel now is the church. And instead of Jews, it's now Gentiles who are the people of God.

Now I want to make it clear that there are and have been people who indeed hold this view, who've gone to that extreme. And usually, this comes with strong feelings of antisemitism, that the Jews are terrible people and deserve to be persecuted. We see this in the Roman church's inquisition of the Jews. We also see it later among some Protestant movements, and especially it came to a head in Germany under the Nazi movement where Hitler cleverly used this kind of theology to bring the church behind his program of doing away with the Jews in a holocaust. Now we, as Christians, I hope we'll all agree that such antisemitic sentiments are wrong, and we condemn the holocaust, but it does leave the question, is there some truth to this?

Did we replace the Jews? Is Christ the king of the Gentiles? And we want to look today at three points. Firstly, who did Jesus come for? Secondly, who were those who rejected Jesus?

And thirdly, how do Gentiles fit into the kingdom of God? Now who did Jesus come for? When you go to the gospels, they all make it very clear that Jesus came as the Son of David to minister to His own people. He was the king of the Jews, the king of Israel. And when He came, He preached to the Jews that the kingdom of God was at hand.

And when you look at the ministry of Jesus, you will see that He went only to Jewish villages or towns where there were Jews among them. And even when He sends out the twelve, later the seventy, He gives them this directive. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: do not go among Gentiles or enter into any towns of Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: the kingdom of heaven is near.

Now the Syrophoenician woman, when she came to Jesus for help, Jesus told her, no. It's not for you. I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. You find that in Matthew 15:24. But we do see that as time goes along in Jesus' ministry, there's also a hint of something else that is developing.

So when He travels to Samaria and the woman at the well there challenges Him, now who's right? We Samaritans who worship on Mount Gerizim or you Jews who worship at Mount Zion? Jesus says clearly, you Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is of the Jews. But then He goes a little bit further when He says, but a time is coming when those who worship Him will worship in spirit and in truth.

It's not a matter of where you worship, but how you worship. And also during His ministry, when this Roman centurion comes to Jesus, you read in Matthew 8, where he seeks help for his servant, and Jesus heals the servant. And Jesus marvels at the centurion's faith and then adds, many will come from the East and from the West and will take their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. And also in the account of what happened on this Palm Sunday, if you look at John's account, you will see that as all the people follow Jesus, the Pharisees complain, the whole world has gone after Him. And what they mean by that, it's not just Jews, but also Gentiles who were there.

In fact, we read there were two Gentiles, two Greeks who specifically asked that they want to see Jesus. And Jesus ignores it for a while, but then He comes to address this, and He says, now is the time for the judgment of this world. Now the prince of this world will be driven out, but I, when I'm lifted up from earth, will draw all men to myself. And Jesus here explains that the prince of the world, who is Satan, because Satan took over the kingship that God had given to Adam. When Adam sinned, Satan took over as leader of the world, and Jesus has now come to overthrow Satan as He's lifted up on the cross.

And when He's there, it's not just Jews, but all the world who see Him and be drawn to Him. So clearly, Jesus saw His ministry as one to the Jews, but also told us that a change was going to come. And in our text, after mentioning that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, He says, therefore, I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce fruit. Now that raises the question then, who rejected Jesus?

And I think it's important that we realize it's not the Jewish people as such, but their leaders who are being addressed here. And they recognize that He is speaking to them as we saw in our reading. Now we cannot really understand what's happening here without going to the book of Zechariah. And if I had the time, I would have read chapters 9, 10, and 11 from Zechariah because they speak about this last week of Jesus' life. It begins, of course, when Jesus comes into Jerusalem seated on a donkey as we read in Zechariah 9:9.

And then chapter 10 of Zechariah speaks that Jesus, well, the coming one will reign. But then in Zechariah 11, Zechariah is told that he's got to become a shepherd herding a flock marked for destruction. Now this doesn't make much sense until you realize that Zechariah here is to be a type of Christ. Christ came to herd a flock marked for destruction.

And we read there in Zechariah that as he then acts as a shepherd for this flock, he is to break the rods of grace and unity. And most theologians agree that this rod of grace speaks of the Mosaic covenant that God made with Israel in the wilderness at Mount Sinai. And that the breaking of the rod of unity is speaking about the overthrow of Israel as a nation. And then it specifically mentions the condemnation of the three false shepherds in Zechariah, and we believe this to be referring to the priests, the elders, and the teachers of the law who were the leaders of Israel at the time that Jesus was on earth. And we also read at the end of that chapter that this good shepherd who leads this remnant of the flock, or the flock marked for destruction, is finally fobbed off with 30 pieces of silver. Does that ring a bell?

Very clearly, this is speaking here of Jesus. And if you have time, have a look at these chapters later today. It's just wonderful if you read them in light of what happened in this last week of Jesus' life. Clearly, Jesus identifies Himself as the good shepherd. Look at John 10, for example.

He cares for all of those who recognize His voice. And this good shepherd is sent specifically to minister to the afflicted, as we read in Zechariah, the flock that is marked for slaughter. And the Jewish leaders criticize Him for this because they thought He should be ministering to them if He were truly a prophet from God. And they criticize Him that Jesus instead is ministering to the sinners, to the poor, the outcast. And in the Jewish worldview, it is the sinners, the poor, the outcast, who are not deserving of salvation.

That is why God makes them poor, why God gives them sickness and problems and so on. But the righteous ones, like them, the ones who lead the people, who are blessed, who are rich, and so on. And so they object to Jesus ministering to tax collectors and prostitutes. And Jesus says to them, truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. Now we see then that Jesus, as the promised Messiah, as the good shepherd, He gathers His sheep from the outcasts, from the ones who are hurting.

And the crucial factor for our belonging to the kingdom of God is not a matter of pedigree, who your fathers or forefathers are. It's not a matter of personal holiness, how well you do, how shiny your sainthood may be, but it is a matter of faith, of trusting God. Those who believe in Jesus and follow the good shepherd, they are God's people. They recognize Jesus as God's Messiah, as their anointed king. And this is shown in the parables that surround this event, the parable of the two sons, which we read.

The one son who says, yes, I'll do it, Dad, but doesn't do it, and the other one who said, no, not for me, but then says, oh, I should be doing it and goes and does it. These are the outcasts. Again, the wedding banquet parable shows that all the invited guests don't have time to come.

And Jesus said, then bring in the outcasts into this wedding breakfast. And so we see that it's the Jewish leaders, the rich, the well-to-do, who are the ones who are rejecting Jesus. We read that in Mark 15:1, that very early in the morning, the chief priests, the elders, and the teachers of the law, those were the three false shepherds, and the whole Sanhedrin reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led Him away, and turned Him over to Pilate. And here we see that Israel, as represented by their leaders, reject Jesus as their king.

And they say to Pilate, we have no king but Caesar. There is no room for Jesus' kingship in their lives. Now, of course, there is a sense in which not just the Jewish leaders, but the whole world forsook Jesus at the time of His crucifixion. We realize that all of us are responsible for this. Even those who now follow Him.

In Zechariah 13:7, we are taught, strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. And we see that at the time when Jesus is crucified, His disciples run away from Him. Even Peter who says, I'll never leave you, he denies Jesus three times. And we see that this is not something new, but this is something that happened all over history, that people reject God and go to the other side. We see this from the time of Adam and Eve.

We see that one of their sons, Cain, chooses the path of darkness, but Abel follows God. We see it at the time of Noah, how the whole world has forsaken God. We see how God chooses Abraham as His special one to worship Him. But of Abraham's sons, it's only Isaac who follows Him. And we find that of the 12 tribes, after a while, it's only Judah who remains faithful, the tribe of Judah, to God.

But even they fall into sin and leave God and are taken into exile, and a faithful remnant is brought back. What we see is that God's people are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking all the time. Every time, there's more fall away and more fall away till finally, you could say at the time of crucifixion, when even the disciples leave Jesus in the lurch, Christ is there alone to face Satan. And at that moment when Christ faces Satan on the cross, rejected by the world, rejected by God, hanging in between, that Jesus is victorious and brings victory over sin. Jesus had to face Satan alone without any help when He said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And when He's alone, He wins that victory that now makes Him the king of creation because He put down the Satan who was the prince of the world and sets up His own kingdom.

And those who follow Him, they become part of this kingdom. And Jesus made it clear to Nicodemus, there's only one way you can do that, and that's to be born again, to be born of the Spirit. And this is not just true for Jews like Nicodemus himself. This is true for people of all nations. Those who come to God, who are born again, they become His children.

They become the children of Abraham. And this is what's made possible because Jesus bound up Satan so that he could deceive the nations no more. That's what we read in Revelation 20. It's not talking about a thousand year millennial kingdom. It's talking about the time when Satan is bound so he can deceive the nations no more.

Makes it very specific. It doesn't deny that Satan is still going around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But what he could do in Old Testament times, that is whittle down the people of God more and more and have all the nations follow him, he can't do that since Christ's victory on the cross. Because now we see that the gospel goes out from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the world, and there's nothing Satan can do to stop it.

And so Jesus is building up His kingdom. And it brings us to the third question, how then do Gentiles fit into the kingdom? Any idea that God did away with the Jews to replace them with Gentiles is foreign to scripture. What we do see is that Israel is reduced to a remnant. Again, Zechariah tells us it's a third of Israel that is faithful to God, and that may well be numerically correct that about a third of the Jews followed Jesus after His death.

They became the Christians. They lost their Jewish identity because it was no longer important to them. And this has been happening throughout Israel throughout history, that the Jews have come in to be God's people. I was talking to one of my fellow missionaries on the field, and her name is Ruth Solomon. And I said, oh, it's great to have one of Abraham's daughters working with us on the field.

She said, what are you talking about? I said, well, you'd be Jewish, wouldn't you? Me? Jewish? Where do you get that idea?

I saw her again a few months later, and she said, you know what we were talking about last time about me being Jewish? I wrote home, and I discovered my grandfather was a converted Jew. She was not aware of it, and that's so typical. And you think of all the people you know in churches and so on who are called Abrahams or Isaacson or Jacobson. They are probably converted Jews with names like that.

Although, I believe we had a pastor in our church who was called De Vries, who was a converted Jew. Don't know where the name came from, but they lose their Jewish identity and find their identity in Christ as Christians. And so what we see is not that we replace these people. Rather, what we saw in the book of Romans here is that we are like an olive tree where people are grafted in to the healthy tree so that they may bear fruit. And these are Gentiles as unnatural branches, but also the Jews that repent as the natural branches.

They are grafted in, and together, we make up the church. We make up the kingdom of God. By grace, we are included with God's people, not to replace them, but we are added unto the faithful remnant. And so it's believers who are the true children of Abraham. Now next time somebody charges you with the idea, you guys teach that you have replaced the Jews, you say, no.

We don't believe that at all. We do not replace the Jews, but we are joined to them to share in their wonderful promises. So don't let people deceive you on that point. And as those who share in the promises with the Jewish people, we must always learn to also pray for them, and we must pray for the peace of Jerusalem, especially now at the time when we see that so much of the world is turning against Israel, when we see a revival in antisemitism even here in Australia. I think this is a good time to pray for God's people. And above all, let's pray that they will come to recognize Jesus as their king.

And, of course, this is something we can pray for because in Zechariah 12, we read that when the Jews look upon Him whom they have pierced, they will mourn and turn to Him. Let's pray that we will see this happening. Let's pray that even this nation that came up so miraculously in 1948, which we call Israel, that this will become indeed a centre of Christian worship. But Israel is not the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus makes it abundantly clear to His people.

No. I have not come to set up an earthly kingdom here. I'm setting up the kingdom of heaven, and this kingdom is among you. It is found in those who follow me. They are the citizens of this kingdom.

We are the ones who worship God and who see Christ as our king sitting at the right hand of God. So the kingdom of God is present on earth, but not in its fullness. It will not come in fullness until Christ returns from heaven. And then when He sets up His kingdom, it will be in a heavenly Jerusalem that descends on the new earth where God Himself is the builder and maker. Look up Hebrews 11 and so on.

And Jesus will not just reign for a thousand years, but forever and ever. And that's the wonderful message that we have. Christ came as our king. He rules at the right hand of God, and those Christians who've died reign with Him. But the time is coming soon that He will rule on a renewed earth over all who follow Him, who have been born again and become citizens of His kingdom.

Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. Let us pray. Our Lord God and our Father, we look forward to that time when Christ will return to reign on this earth, not just a thousand years, but forever and ever. And we thank you, Lord, that in this new earth, there will be no more sin, no more sorrow, no more crying, but all will live in that wonderful shalom where we live in fellowship, worshipping you, loving your creation, and above all, loving you and our Lord Jesus Christ who made it all possible. We thank you, Lord, for the victory He won alone on the cross and that through what He has done, we see your kingdom growing in this world.

Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. We pray it in His name. Amen.