We see floods in Mumbai or Wayanad sweeping away houses, and we see dangerous landslides where whole towns are wiped out. As prophesied in Leviticus 26, when His people Israel sinned repeatedly in spite of God’s constant discipline, God finally sent terrible thunder, floods, and landslides that washed them away from their promised land. Many died, and only a few survived on the shores of a foreign land in Babylon.
The skies were dark for Israel for many, many years. Was there any hope for them? In the pouring rain of judgment, there was only one hope—a rainbow for them. We see that hope in Leviticus 26:40–46. After the sobering teaching of the first thirty-nine verses, we come to the rainbow of hope passage, a multicolored bow of promise. It promises that even in the worst conditions, if they repent and turn to God, He will restore them.
The basis for God’s restoration is not because of our repentance. It is not that we can sin all we want and then, whenever we repent, God is obligated to hear us—no! In some cases, no matter how much people repent, He is not obligated to save them. The passage tells us the only basis for God’s restoration is that wonderful word: covenant. Verse 42 says, “Then I will remember My covenant.” That is the sole basis of God’s salvation of Israel, and even for us, the only basis for God saving humanity is the covenant of redemption. That is why the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, right after discussing the hopeless fall of man in Chapter 6, moves straight to Chapter 7 on God’s covenant.
Let me remind you one final time of the contents of Leviticus 26, a deeply sobering chapter. The first section details the blessings promised for obedience, summarized as the three Ps: Priority (protecting the Sabbath and piety in God’s house) leading to the blessings of Plenty, Peace, and Presence.
Conversely, if you do not heed God’s word, if you disobey Him, fail to give Him priority, neglect the Sabbath, show no piety in His house, and sin against Him, there are five escalating levels of curses:
- Calamity and sudden disease.
- Famine and drought.
- Unexpected dangers from wild animals.
- The avenging sword of war.
- Exile and total destruction.
As we saw, these may look like Old Testament punishments, but the Book of Revelation shows that our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever; He punishes people for sin and disobedience in profound, spiritual, and unmistakable ways even today. Even in the New Testament, disobedience brings discipline—sometimes immediately in the house of God, as with Ananias and Sapphira, and sometimes gradually and spiritually, as seen in 1 Corinthians 11 with sickness and premature death.
Suppose someone right now is experiencing God’s severe discipline: no plenty, but famine in their spiritual life; no peace, but constant fear in their conscience; no sense of God’s presence. You see the avenging sword of God in your providence where nothing works out, leading to failure upon failure. Like the exiled Israelites, you feel very far from the Father’s presence and promised blessings, much like the prodigal son who journeyed into a far country. What should you do?
The chapter closes by showing us the way back for all prodigals who are suffering under the burdens of God’s discipline. How can you be delivered from God’s curses and once again experience His blessings of plenty, peace, and presence? In one word: the way of repentance. But not all repentance is true repentance; there is a specific, saving repentance. This chapter outlines the elements of true repentance that bring deliverance, found in verses 40 through 46. The first two elements of repentance are covered in verses 40 and 41, while the promise of deliverance is detailed in verses 42 through 45.
1. The Senseless Heart Becomes Sensitive
Continual sin hardens our heart; it makes us proud so that we do not realize what we are doing. Blinded by the power of lust, we fail to grasp the horror of our actions. The first step in repentance is that the proud, hard heart must become humble. The stony heart must be crushed, and the senseless heart must become sensible.
Notice how this is described in verse 41: “If their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt…” The hardened heart is humbled and softened. A senseless, calloused heart has no sense of God, no realization of what we are doing against Him, and no gratitude toward a God who has done so much for us. The sign of a hardened, uncircumcised heart is always pride and arrogance. Pride blinds us, keeping us from realizing that God is humbling us. That hard, proud heart must be crushed, subdued, and circumcised—which refers to the cutting away of hardness, transforming a stone-like heart into a soft, responsive, fleshy one.
How does that happen? Verse 41 continues: “…and they accept their guilt for their iniquity.” We see three ways a heart is softened:
- Having the right response to God’s discipline.
- Having a true, Holy Spirit-given sense of sin, which always leads to a humbled and softened heart.
- The transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
First, let’s look at the right response to punishment. Verse 41 says: “If they walk contrary to Me, and I also walk contrary to them, and bring them into the land of their enemies…” The Israelites were stubborn children who refused to change. To discipline them, God sent calamity; they still didn’t change. He sent famine, yet their necks remained stiff. He unleashed wild animals, but they remained stubborn in their sin. He brought the avenging sword, and still there was no repentance. Finally, as the ultimate stroke, He sent them into the land of their enemies.
When people are suffering terribly under discipline, what should their response be? They must accept their guilt. When we sin and suffer, instead of proudly accusing God for our suffering, the right response is to recognize: “My suffering is because of my sin, it is a just punishment, and I completely deserve it.”
Consider the two thieves on the cross. One blasphemed God, whining, “Why was I born in a poor family? Why didn’t I have opportunities? That’s why I robbed and murdered—God is to blame!” The other thief had a very different response: he realized that his punishment was entirely just and deserved for his sins. The proud, hardened heart of man will never admit guilt. Like the first thief, we make excuses, rationalize our wrongs, and even blame God, acting as though He is unfair while never admitting that we are suffering justly because of our sin.
The first step of repentance requires you to realize that God is disciplining you for your sin. Do not take His rod lightly or ignore it by calling it mere bad luck, telling yourself that things will work out eventually. Recognize it as the Father’s disciplining rod. Tragically, many people skip this first step of repentance and simply keep living as they are.
It is humanly impossible to humble that heart on our own. A person might change their methods or their outward lifestyle—perhaps altering their words, dress, or behavior—while their heart remains completely unchanged. That is why God brings outward, severe trials: to humble the stubborn heart. We see this in the Book of Revelation, where even when hailstones fall from the sky and earthquakes shake the earth, unrepentant people blaspheme God instead of humbling their hearts and realizing that these judgments are happening because of their sin so that they might turn.
Second, a true sense of sin. A genuine sense of sin happens when the Holy Spirit makes us sensitive to the manifold evils of our actions. He makes us see how good God has been to us—giving us life, breath, and every blessing, and graciously sending Christ to die for our sins—while we lived like ungrateful, senseless, selfish animals. We realize what our sin has done to God: it is like throwing filth or spitting in His face. How horrific! We recognize that our sins have reopened the wounds of Christ and grieved the Holy Spirit.
When you see what sin has done to your soul, your family, your children, your church, and the name of Christ, you begin to view sin differently. You develop a deep sorrow for sin, a hatred for sin, and a holy hatred for yourself. You wonder why God hasn’t cast you straight into hell and why He still gives you life. You feel deeply ashamed, tears stream from your eyes, and you mourn over your sin. That is a true sense of sin.
Third, the work of the Holy Spirit. Combining the right response to discipline with a true sense of sin, the Holy Spirit circumcises your heart, making it humble and soft. The Hebrew word kanah translated as “humbled” means “subdued.” Think of the picture of the surrounding Canaanite kings attacking Israel in the days of Joshua; God gave Israel the victory, and they subdued their enemies, placing their feet upon their necks. The enemies were no longer rampaging against Israel, but were utterly subdued and brought into submission.
This is a beautiful picture of what the Holy Spirit does in the sinful heart of a person when He subdues their uncircumcised heart. There are viciously raging, fleshly lusts and pride in the human heart that drive continual sin and rebellion against God. On our own, we cannot change. But when a person responds rightly to discipline and is granted a true sense of sin, the Holy Spirit crushes those valiant, fleshly desires. The Spirit places His foot upon the neck of the sinner’s raging lusts and rebellion, completely subduing them.
The Holy Spirit so works in the heart that He makes it soft and sensitive to God’s love and grace. When true repentance is granted, people humble themselves and want to obey God—not grudgingly, but joyfully and willingly.
A classic example of such humbling is Manasseh, one of the worst kings of Judah. He was profoundly rebellious and led a movement raging against God. He defiled the holy temple with pagan altars, sacrificed his own sons in the fire of Molech, practiced sorcery, and orchestrated a reign of terror so bloodthirsty that he filled Jerusalem with the blood of innocent saints and prophets from one end to the other.
The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention and stiffened their necks. Therefore, the Lord brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against them, and they captured Manasseh. Those very cruel Assyrians put metal hooks through his nose or lips and dragged him away like an animal—the ultimate insult to the dignity of a proud king. God humbled him through torture in the dungeons of Assyria. Broken by the experience, Manasseh finally recognized his sin, his heart was crushed, and he entreated the Lord his God, humbling himself greatly before the God of his fathers. God heard his prayer, delivered him, and brought him back to Jerusalem. There stood a man who was utterly subdued and humbled by the providential rod of God and the melting spirit of God within. From then on, he lived a repentant life, obeying God, cleansing the temple, restoring proper worship, and trying to bring the nation back to the Lord.
2. Broken-Hearted Confession of Sin
How do we know an uncircumcised heart has been truly humbled? The second evidence is a broken-hearted confession of sin. Notice verse 40: “If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me…”
This confession is the outward expression of an internal change. God first points to the external expression, but true confession does not stop merely on the surface; it flows from a circumcised, crushed heart.
To confess means to openly acknowledge and openly agree with God about how horribly we have sinned against Him. One of the primary deceptions sin teaches us is to cover up our wrongs. We tell ourselves, “Oh, this isn’t even that big of a sin. Who doesn’t do it? How many people struggle with this? If you only understood my situation and the pressure I’m under… I did it in a moment of weakness; it’s not a big deal.”
Remember when David sinned with Bathsheba? That is precisely what he tried to do. He thought, “I am a great king, I have immense stress, and I’m permitted to have many wives. I slipped in a moment of weakness.” He engaged in a massive cover-up, even arranging a murder to hide his tracks. But after the prophet Nathan pointed his finger at him and declared, “You are the man!” what did David say? He said, “I have sinned against the Lord.” The months of cover-up came to an end, and he openly confessed his sin and admitted his guilt in Psalm 51.
When Israel suffered for seventy years in exile, their uncircumcised hearts were humbled, and they confessed their sin. Look at Daniel 9. Daniel, acting as the representative mouthpiece of Israel, models how to confess sin:
“Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said: ‘O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him… we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled… Neither have we heeded Your servants the prophets… O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face…'”
As we see this open, humble owning of sin and the taking of full responsibility for covenant-breaking, we witness true confession.
The Promise of Restoration
When these two elements of true repentance are present—a humbled, uncircumcised heart and a broken-hearted confession admitting “I have sinned”—we arrive at the next heading: the promise of deliverance, restoration, and blessing found in verses 42 through 45.
There are two aspects to this restoration: the basis of deliverance and the promise of restoration. If they have sinned so grievously, what is the only basis upon which God can restore them?
Notice the basis in verse 42: “Then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember…” Remembering is like the rainbow after the storm. Think of what the future looked like for Israel when they were swept away in God’s anger for seventy years; what hope did they have? Just as after the great flood in Genesis, when God’s anger swept away the old world and He set a multicolored rainbow in the sky as a holy pledge that He would never again destroy mankind by a global flood, this promise appears in Israel’s dark sky like a resplendent bow of many colors, beaming with the mild, merciful countenance and smile of the Most High God: “I will remember My covenant.”
The word covenant is one of the most important words uniting the entire Bible; it is used five times in this short passage in Leviticus 26. The only reason the world survives today is because of the Noahic covenant. The only reason Israel was not totally abandoned is because God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The only reason God saves fallen sinners is because of the eternal covenant of redemption.
This covenant is what motivated God to act throughout history. In Exodus 2, when the people were suffering in Egyptian bondage, God remembered His covenant and delivered them. When they made the golden calf and God was so enraged that He told Moses He would destroy them, what did Moses plead? “Turn from Your fierce wrath… Remember Your covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.”
We see the exact same thing in Daniel’s prayer. In spite of sinning so greatly and provoking God’s anger, how could Daniel dare make the outrageous plea for his people to be brought back to the land? Because in Daniel 9 he prayed, “O Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant and loving-kindness…” Daniel pleaded the covenant, reminding God of His promise, and on that basis asked the extraordinary: “Lord, bring Your people back into the land.” Thus, the covenant is the sole basis of their restoration.
Now, what about the promise of restoration? The Lord says He will remember the covenant, but what will result from that? While Leviticus 26 doesn’t explicitly state, “And I will bring them back to the land,” the restoration is clearly implied.
When God “remembers,” it means far more than Him merely mentally recalling information—as if He were thinking, “Oh yes, I almost forgot what I promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” No! In Scripture, remembering refers to God sovereignly arousing Himself to act in favorable grace and compassion. That is how the phrase is used throughout the Bible: in Exodus 2, God remembered His covenant, and immediately acted to bring Israel out of Egypt; in 1 Samuel 1:19, the Lord remembered Hannah, which meant He miraculously opened her closed womb to conceive a child.
So when God says that when His people are in a foreign land, and when they repent and cry out to Him, He will remember them, it means God is saying: “I will act upon the stage of history. I will take My people out of that land of exile, carry them back, and place them once again in the promised land.” And that is precisely what the Lord did after seventy years of captivity, around 520 BC, when He stirred up a man named Cyrus to issue a decree allowing the Jews to return to the land of Israel.
We have covered the conditions of repentance in verses 40 through 41, and the promise of restoration in verses 42 through 45. Now, let us turn to the applications, beginning with three important exhortations.
Exhortation 1: Use Calamities as a Time for Self-Evaluation
When God visits your life with sickness, an accident, or tragedy—whether it comes to you personally or to someone very close to you, such as a family member or a child—you ought to use that calamity as an occasion to examine your heart and life for sin. The rod has come, and we should ask, “Lord, is this because of sin?” We often shy away from talking about difficult things like this.
Someone might object, “Pastor, isn’t this a practically oppressive burden you are putting upon the people of God? When something goes wrong—an accident, trouble, crisis, or a pitiable condition—you are asking us to self-examine. My wife got a finger fracture last week, and I got neck pain, so I was practicing this… Isn’t this cruel and oppressive to say to people?”
We have to understand two things here.
First, I am saying this is a personal duty, not a duty toward one another. When you see someone in your family or church facing suffering, you have no right to judge them and assume they are facing it because they did something wrong. Our duty is to pray, help them in every way, weep with those who weep, sympathize, care, and seize the opportunity to show our love. It is completely wrong to look at someone else’s hardship and say, “You are facing this because you must have done something wrong.”
Second, I am saying this is a personal duty for yourself. When you face troubles, it is a good time for self-introspection. Someone might say, “Even that is a burden we are putting on people!” Is it? Self-introspection is a blessed means of grace that is admittedly very difficult for our flesh in normal times—it is certainly difficult for me. Yet Scripture repeatedly tells us to examine ourselves. How many of us actually follow that?
For men who can be so easily caught up and made dizzy by the cares and concerns of the world, we never realize how far off track we can go. Then a rod comes, and we are called to stop, look, evaluate, and consider our own lives. I do not believe that is a burden at all.
As I already disclaimed, hardship and calamity are not always the direct rod of God for sin. Look at Job: he didn’t sin, he was blameless, he feared God, and he shunned evil, yet he faced immense difficulties. But the storm that came in Jonah’s life was because he sinned, disobeyed God, and steered his life in the wrong direction against God’s will. Jonah was even sleeping soundly in the boat in the midst of a storm! God sends storms to wake us from our sins and turn our direction back toward His will. All I am saying is to examine yourself and see whether you are more like Job or like Jonah. Most of the time, to be honest, we are much more like Jonah than Job.
A true believer growing in sanctification will welcome this exercise. They will echo Psalm 139:23–24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” When the rod comes into my life, I should pray, “Lord, let me know if I am walking as a Job or as a Jonah.”
Lamentations 3:39 asks: “Why should any living mortal or any man offer complaint in view of his sins? Let us examine and probe our ways and let us return to the Lord.” When calamity comes, we should examine and probe our ways and return to the Lord.
Thomas Brooks wrote a classic work called The Mute Christian Under the Rod, in which he says that in all our sorrows, we should read our sins, and when God’s hand is upon our backs, our hands should be upon our sins. This kind of introspection and self-evaluation—without judging others—will harm no one. Rather, it will promote sanctification and ensure a safe arrival home. We know God sends all things for our sanctification to make us more like Christ; how can that happen if we never examine ourselves? So let me ask you: use calamities as a time for self-evaluation.
Exhortation 2: Learn to See Such Rods as God’s Great Covenant Love
Let me remind you of what I taught this morning. Hebrews 12:5–6 says: “Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For the Lord loves those whom He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”
You see, the design of the Father’s rod upon your back is not that you would bolt away from Him in terror, but rather that you would return toward Him. Remember how Leviticus 26 puts it? When God brings calamity and wields the rod against His people, what does He want them to do? To humble themselves, to confess their sins, and to return to Him.
The very fact that His rod is upon your back is proof that He still loves you. This rod is not meant to make you cringe away from Him in despair; it is designed to draw you nigh to Him. This rod is a token of His love for you—not ordinary love, but covenant love.
Exhortation 3: May God’s Rod Bring You to True Repentance
Remember the two elements of repentance we discussed:
- The uncircumcised heart is humbled—meaning your heart is crushed and softened. You are no more stiff-necked or hardened. This happens in three ways: having the right response to God’s discipline (realizing that what you are suffering is what you deserve because of your sin), gaining a true sense of sin (seeing the horror and evil of sin and what it does to your soul, body, and family, which creates godly sorrow and hatred for sin), and yielding to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, who circumcises the heart.
- Broken-hearted confession of sin—with a crushed and circumcised heart, you openly confess your sin.
Someone might say, “Pastor, I have sinned so terribly that God has brought a severe rod upon me. Will He even accept me? I feel so disgusting; I loathe myself and my sin. How dare I ask the Lord to forgive me and accept me back into His holy bosom as His child? On what basis could He possibly forgive me?”
Oh, whatever you have done—even if you have gone like the prodigal son, losing everything and ending up in a pig pen—you can still come back to God. Why? Because of that one precious word: covenant.
What a precious word that is, filling us with hope in the most hopeless situations! Trust and plead the covenant. In His covenant, He promised that if we come with broken-hearted confession, He will indeed accept us. Remember that God promised the Old Testament people here that if they confessed, He would remember His covenant, forgive them, and envelop them in His arms of blessing.
We possess an even greater covenant sealed with the blood of His own Son, accompanied by infinitely more precious promises. First John 1:9 assures us: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” There is a boldness in our covenant that believers under the old covenant never knew. Brethren, it is the covenant! The covenant is so vital for the Christian; it is a great encouragement for the sinful believer to return to his Lord. Charles Spurgeon writes, “The covenant is the sure foundation of mercy.”
Now listen: when the entire fabric of outward grace manifested in a saint lies in ruins, the fundamental basis of love remains completely unmoved because of the covenant. As long as God is a covenant-keeping God, He can rebuild a saint’s life from the ruins once again. It means you may be in the worst situation possible because of sin, feeling utterly hopeless because of God’s rod, lying in ruins just like Israel in exile—but when you truly repent, the Lord can restore you fully. God will rebuild your life just like He rebuilt Israel.
Let me close with a picture from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian and his companion have diverted from the King’s Highway, wandered off onto an easier path, and gotten lost. They find themselves trapped in the territory of Giant Despair inside Doubting Castle. Giant Despair beats them mercilessly with a heavy crab-tree cudgel—a vivid depiction of the rod of God. Christian and Hopeful were so downhearted, so utterly in despair, that the giant counseled them: “Kill yourselves. Use a knife, a noose, or poison. Do it yourself, or I will.” That is precisely what the devil will insinuate to you when you fall into deep sin and guilt: “You’ve sinned too many times; there is no hope for you. Just give up and destroy yourself.”
How did Christian and Hopeful—lying half-dead for four days and fainting—finally escape?
Christian suddenly came to his senses and said, “What a fool am I to lie like this in a stinking dungeon when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my bosom called Promise.” Christian pulled out the key of the covenant promise and unlocked the dungeon door. The heavy iron door flew open with ease, and they joyfully escaped back onto the King’s Highway.
And remember what happened right after that? They came to the Delectable Mountains, where beautiful streams flowed for them to drink, and fruit hung heavy on the branches for them to sweetly enjoy. So, whatever dungeon of doubt you may be trapped in right now, dear child of God, take this key—God’s covenant promise. It will shatter any fortress of discouragement built by the devil and set you free.
If you are a sinner sitting here today, no matter how bad you feel or how far you have fallen, this is the key. This key can release you from your miserable dungeon of damnation and a ruinous life. Try this key! Take the key of the covenant promise and pray: “Lord, You promised that whoever comes to You, You will by no means cast out. Lord, You have said that if I confess my sin, circumcise my heart, humble myself before You, and seek mercy in Jesus Christ, I will be saved. I cast and impose my sinful self upon Your promise, and I ask You to envelop Your holy arms around me and save me today.”
Try it with faith, and lo and behold, God will save you—because He is a God who keeps His covenant!
A Note on Dispensational Interpretation
Most commentaries I read approach this passage with a distinct dispensational lens. These groups separate Israel and the church completely, arguing that Leviticus 26 is entirely about Israel and has nothing to do with us today. They claim that just as God disciplined Israel by sending them into Babylonian captivity, He disciplined them again after they rejected the Messiah, scattering them among the nations after 70 AD. They believe God is currently bringing all Jews back to the land, citing the formation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948 as the beginning of their return to the promised land. Today, much of world politics and thousands of seminars view prophecy through this exact lens, claiming we can see the prophecies of Leviticus 26 happening right now.
Is this view correct?
We should not blindly agree with it simply because it is taught by majority consensus or famous preachers; we must study our own Bibles to see if it is true. Let me ask a simple question: God clearly states in Leviticus that He will bring them back only when they repent of their sins. They were scattered because they rejected their Messiah, Jesus Christ. Now, have they repented and accepted Jesus Christ as the reason God brought them back? Where is that massive national repentance? The nation still rejects Jesus Christ, and in fact, many still mock Him as powerless. What we are seeing today is merely political maneuvering, not spiritual restoration.
Those who hold to this view have failed to understand the glorious fulfillment that took place after Jesus came. If you read the New Testament properly—studying passages like Ephesians 2 to see what Christ has done to tear down the wall of enmity between Jews and Gentiles, uniting them into one new man in His body, the church—you will realize how shallow that dispensational view is. God is actually fulfilling the covenant promise made to Abraham that all families of the earth will be blessed through his seed—ultimately realized through the church.
In the kingdom of God, the Old Testament nation of Israel was a type pointing toward its celestial heights in the church, because the church is the ultimate expression of the people of God. The church did not replace Israel; the church fulfilled Israel! Throughout redemptive history, Israel served as a type and a shadow designed to lift our eyes to the glorious privilege of being the people of God.
The danger of deceptive dispensational teachings is that they fixate us on a mere type and cause us to lose sight of the glorious reality of the church and the Lord Jesus Christ. As we study Ephesians, we see what a glorious temple the church is—we are living stones built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone. It is the glorious dwelling place of the living God being built right now. Paul says, “I am a master builder here.” But what do dispensationalists focus on? They focus on a physical third temple being built in Israel. When we study the feasts of Israel, we see they all pointed directly to Jesus Christ and His church.
The apostles themselves recognized that the final temple the Old Testament spoke about God building is the church. Look at Acts 15 during the first-century Jerusalem Council with the apostles. A great argument arose: God is building His temple with Gentiles! Should the Gentiles be circumcised? In Acts 15:13, James begins to argue how the building of this final temple—the church—was prophesied long ago by the prophets. He quotes Amos 9:16–17: “After this I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord who does all these things.”
So you see, these Old Testament types concerning Israel are elevated to a point where their ultimate fulfillment is found in the church! God rebuilds the tent of David in the church. The church is the glorious crescendo of God’s kingdom. As Galatians 6:16 declares, believers in Christ are the true Israel of God.
So people ask: “Will God not do anything for bloodline Jews now? Are all the promises made to the forefathers gone?”
Jews are not inherently superior or uniquely privileged in a saving sense apart from Christ. In Romans 11, Paul speaks of the promises made to the patriarchs, stating that “all Israel will be saved.” I believe there is still a place for ethnic Israel in the redemptive history of God, but do you know where that place is? It is in the church.
Our focus, brethren, should be on bringing Jewish people into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our primary concern should not be getting them back into old real estate in a corner of the Mediterranean Sea; every Jewish person must be engrafted into the true olive tree, which is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether Jews return to earthly Canaan is a matter of relatively little importance, but that they become citizens of the heavenly kingdom—the New Jerusalem—that is the only thing that truly matters!