E11-3: A gentile’s salvation is based ONLY on the covenants God has made with Israel

“But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.  Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.”-Exodus 11:7-8

Over and over again, we hear God telling us He makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

I’ve got a little tip for all of you Bible readers out there whether you’re a pastor, scholar, or teacher.

When God keeps repeating something, you had best pay attention.

Understand the main reason why God crushed Egypt with His supernatural wonders and had the Israelites plunder the silver and gold of the Egyptian people was to demonstrate the line He had drawn in the sand between Israel and Egypt.

Again, in the Bible Egypt is a “type” that represents the Gentile world.

So God was really drawing a line between Israel and the rest of the world!

One point I feel many overlook or misunderstand is that this distinction still stands.

 To this very day, and until the end of time, God views the world as Israel, and everybody else.

Don’t ever think that the setting apart of Israel from the rest of the world has changed or become obsolete.

The teaching that the Christian church replaced Israel is just patently unscriptural, whether from an Old or New Testament perspective.

The division between Old and New is a false, man-made division anyhow.

If you’re a gentile, you may be thinking ‘Where does this leave me?‘

The answer is simple.

From God’s spiritual perspective, a gentile believer is grafted into the covenants of Israel by trusting in Yeshua as Lord and Messiah.

I can’t understand why this is so difficult for some people to understand.

A gentile believer has to join Israel, NOT vice versa.

The New Covenant was NEVER a covenant between God and the gentiles.

YHVH ONLY entered into covenants with Israel. 

Yeshua’s coming DID NOT end the distinction between Israel and the rest of the world.

What Yeshua accomplished by means of His own blood was simply to provide a way for Gentiles to be grafted into Israel’s covenants.

For crying out loud man, let’s not forget that Yeshua (or “Jesus” as the gentiles call Him) Himself was an Israelite.

There are many scenes in the New Testament that show Yeshua took great pride in His Israelite heritage.

Now don’t misunderstand me and think I’m saying a gentile becomes a physical or ethnic Jew once he or she becomes saved.

I’m not.

Ethnic or physical distinctions remain.

Nor am I implying that a Jew is automatically saved simply by virtue of his or her ethnicity. 

By God’s reckoning, only those Jews and gentiles who believe and trust Yeshua as Lord and Messiah are saved.  

Together they form ONE body that Paul refers to as “spiritual Israel” or the “Israel of God“.

The primary objective of this post is to dispel the false notion that God abandoned Israel and then somehow entered into a New Covenant with the gentile world.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Paul explains this in his Olive Tree analogy in the Book of Romans.

In Scripture, the Olive Tree symbolizes Israel.

Paul makes it very clear that gentiles are wild branches that are grafted into the Olive Tree.

They do NOT replace the Olive Tree.

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

 ^“If some of the branches have been broken off,
and you,
though a wild olive shoot,
have been grafted in among the others
and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root,
do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches.
If you do, consider this:
You do not support the root,
but the root supports you.”
-Romans 11:17-18

When Yeshua saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him,
“Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
-John 1:47

Then Yeshua said to the woman,
“I was sent only to help God’s lost sheep–
–the people of Israel.”
-Matthew 15:24