Will Every Jew Be Saved?

00:00:00.000 | An important question comes in to us from Brooke, a listener.

00:00:07.480 | "Hi Pastor John, my pastor believes that the Jewish people, those who believe the Messiah

00:00:13.200 | is yet to come, will go to heaven because they are God's chosen people."

00:00:18.080 | Referencing some parts in Revelation.

00:00:20.440 | "I disagree with him because I believe that all must get to heaven through Jesus Christ.

00:00:27.000 | Where do you stand on this issue and on this debate?

00:00:31.440 | Will all Israelites be saved in the end?"

00:00:35.640 | No, all Israelites will not be saved in the end.

00:00:40.520 | And more specifically to Brooke's concern, no Jews who are waiting for a Messiah and

00:00:47.600 | rejecting Jesus while they wait will be saved.

00:00:52.080 | So let me take those one at a time.

00:00:55.200 | Will all Israel be saved and will specifically Jews who are waiting for a Messiah be saved?

00:01:04.000 | First some passages on the first one.

00:01:07.080 | When Jesus saw the faith of this Gentile centurion in Matthew 8, he said he'd not seen such faith

00:01:14.840 | among the Israelites.

00:01:16.160 | And then he adds this in verses 11 and 12 of Matthew 8.

00:01:20.280 | "I tell you, many will come from east and west," that's Gentiles, "and recline at table

00:01:27.200 | with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom,"

00:01:34.560 | that's the Jews that are rejecting him in his own day, "will be thrown into outer darkness.

00:01:42.120 | In that place will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

00:01:48.320 | Later in Matthew 23, he made it crystal clear what he was talking about when he said "outer

00:01:55.000 | darkness and gnashing of teeth."

00:01:57.600 | In verses 29 to 33, he says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees," so these are the Jewish

00:02:04.320 | leaders, "Woe to you, hypocrites, you serpents, you brood of vipers.

00:02:12.320 | How are you to escape being sentenced to hell?"

00:02:19.320 | The apostle Paul makes it clear that this was what broke his heart, and that his Jewish

00:02:26.880 | kinsmen, with all their covenant privileges, were rejecting Jesus as Messiah and were going

00:02:34.600 | to hell.

00:02:35.900 | So he says in Romans 9, 3, or 2 and 3, I guess, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish

00:02:44.480 | in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for

00:02:51.580 | the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh."

00:02:55.340 | So they were accursed and they were cut off from Christ, and Paul said, "I could wish

00:03:00.440 | that I could take their place."

00:03:03.560 | Now that creates for Paul an enormous problem, and he spent all of Romans 9 to 11 dealing

00:03:11.880 | with the problem and answering it, namely, how could the covenant people, en masse almost,

00:03:18.920 | perish and be lost forever?

00:03:22.080 | And his answer, his central point in verses, in chapters 9 to 11 of Romans is, this is

00:03:30.120 | verses 6 to 8 of chapter 9, "It is not as though the word of God has failed."

00:03:36.400 | So he's answering his own concern.

00:03:38.220 | It looks like the word of God has failed.

00:03:40.280 | So many Jews are lost.

00:03:42.240 | And he says, "It is not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are

00:03:49.040 | descended from Israel belong to Israel."

00:03:53.600 | His answer is, "Not all Israel is Israel."

00:03:56.500 | That's Paul's basic answer.

00:03:59.180 | So from the beginning with the difference between Isaac and Ishmael right down to this

00:04:03.460 | very day, with the distinction between Jews who believe in Jesus and those who don't,

00:04:10.360 | there is a true Israel, and then there is an ethnic Israel.

00:04:15.360 | And he makes that clear in verse 8, where he says, "This means it is not the children

00:04:20.960 | of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of promise are counted as

00:04:28.520 | offspring."

00:04:29.520 | So the children of the flesh would be all ethnic Jews today, but not all of those are

00:04:35.560 | the children of God.

00:04:36.960 | So Paul prays in chapter 10 of Romans, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them

00:04:43.480 | is that they may be saved."

00:04:46.140 | And then he knows that only some will be.

00:04:49.680 | So he says in Romans 11, 14, "I magnify my ministry to the Gentiles in order somehow

00:04:58.840 | to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them."

00:05:05.760 | So only some, he expects, will be saved.

00:05:11.360 | Which will be saved?

00:05:12.560 | Who are those who will be saved?

00:05:14.320 | And he answers in Romans 11, 23, "Even if they do not continue in their unbelief, will

00:05:27.080 | be grafted in."

00:05:28.400 | That is to the true people of God, the Mosaic covenant.

00:05:33.200 | I mean, the Abrahamic covenant, which he talks about as an olive tree.

00:05:37.760 | "For God has the power to graft them in again."

00:05:41.360 | So right now they're lying there broken off in unbelief.

00:05:44.920 | And he says, if they would just believe, they would be grafted back in.

00:05:50.280 | So Paul does, however, look for a day, and this may be, I don't know what the pastor

00:05:58.000 | was thinking.

00:05:59.000 | There is coming a day, I think Paul says, where there'll be a great turning of Israel

00:06:05.200 | to Jesus, her Messiah, and the whole ethnic group of Israel will be saved by trusting

00:06:10.240 | in Jesus.

00:06:11.240 | I think that's what Paul is talking about in Romans 11, 23 to 26, where he says, "I

00:06:16.560 | do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers.

00:06:19.680 | A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles come in.

00:06:26.120 | And in this way, all Israel will be saved.

00:06:30.960 | As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion and he will banish ungodliness from

00:06:35.240 | Jacob."

00:06:37.000 | So my own view is that that refers to a future salvation of the great bulk of Israel.

00:06:46.040 | But the point is, only through Jesus will that salvation come to any Jew, any time.

00:06:53.560 | Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, 16, "When one," that is, one of the Jews, "turns to the Lord,

00:06:59.080 | the veil," that's been lying over their minds, "the veil is removed."

00:07:03.280 | When they turn to the Lord, Jesus, the veil is removed.

00:07:06.400 | And when it's removed, what do they see?

00:07:08.600 | 2 Corinthians 4, 4, they see the glory of Jesus.

00:07:12.560 | Now with regard to that other part of Brooke's question, what about Jewish people today who

00:07:20.040 | are waiting for a Messiah, but in the process, they are not believing Jesus is the Messiah?

00:07:27.320 | Well, that's exactly the situation in which John the Baptist found himself in his question

00:07:32.900 | in Luke 7, 19.

00:07:34.280 | He said, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?"

00:07:40.200 | So that's John the Baptist's very question.

00:07:43.360 | And Jesus answers him by pointing to his miracles and the uniqueness of his preaching to the

00:07:49.200 | poor.

00:07:50.200 | And then he says, "And blessed is the one who does not stumble over me."

00:07:57.360 | Because Jesus didn't look like, he didn't look like they expected the Messiah to look.

00:08:01.560 | And so they stumble over the stumbling stone.

00:08:04.520 | And he said, "Only those will be blessed who don't stumble over me."

00:08:08.640 | And that blessing is valid for all who embrace Jesus and the opposite will be condemnation.

00:08:15.220 | So over and over again, Jesus tells us in the gospels, he tells the Jews that if they

00:08:23.040 | reject him, they reject God, the Father.

00:08:28.280 | If they don't love him and welcome him as Messiah and Son of God, they don't love the

00:08:33.040 | Father.

00:08:34.040 | They don't welcome the Father.

00:08:35.040 | So let me just give a few of those because they're really the very essence of the matter.

00:08:40.000 | John 14, 7, "If you had known me," he says, "you would have known my Father."

00:08:45.560 | John 5, 23, "Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father."

00:08:52.480 | John 5, 42, "I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

00:08:57.440 | I've come in my Father's name and you don't receive me."

00:09:01.360 | John 8, 42, "If God were your Father, you would love me.

00:09:06.480 | I came from God and I'm here."

00:09:09.440 | First John 2, 23, "No one who denies the Son has the Father.

00:09:15.040 | Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also."

00:09:18.640 | John 6, 45, "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me."

00:09:25.480 | It's just hard to imagine how Jesus could make himself clearer that to reject him and

00:09:33.040 | wait for another Messiah is to show you do not have a saving relationship with God.

00:09:41.000 | That's true for Gentiles, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, secularists.

00:09:47.640 | Jesus is the way, the only way to God because he is the incarnation of God.

00:09:54.480 | Amen.

00:09:55.480 | Yeah, sobering realities pointing us back to Christ as our only divine hope.

00:10:01.280 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:10:03.040 | And thank you for the question, Brooke.

00:10:04.980 | If you have a question of your own that you just cannot figure out on your own or some

00:10:09.760 | issue or debate that seems confusing to you, email us your questions at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:10:17.600 | Of course, you can find our audio feeds and our episode archive all through our online

00:10:22.120 | home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:10:27.160 | Well speaking of perplexing Bible questions, will we see God one day or is he completely

00:10:33.640 | invisible?

00:10:35.680 | Biblical texts seem to say yes and yes to both questions, that we will see him and that

00:10:41.040 | we can't see him.

00:10:43.000 | Pastor John will help us untangle these issues for us when we return on Monday.

00:10:48.280 | Until then, I am your host, Tony Reinke.

00:10:50.040 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast and have a wonderful weekend.

00:10:53.680 | We'll see you on Monday.

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Will Every Jew Be Saved?

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