The Israel of God: Past

“He hath not dealt so with any nation” (Psalm clxvii:20).

These words, as you know, are spoken of Israel, God’s chosen nation, and they state that which, to the most careless reader of history, is a self-evident fact. The Jew is the miracle of history, and can no more be understood apart from God than the universe can. There are indeed four mysteries which, apart from God, are insoluble.

One of them is the Bible itself. It is impossible to account for the Bible and for the influence it has had in the world unless you assume that it is God’s book. It is impossible to account for it on the theory of human’ origin merely. The question arises, why has no other book like this ever been produced by man in all the long ages of his history? The Bible stands alone; it is not like any other book, nor has its influence in the world been paralleled by any other book or number of books.

The second insoluble mystery apart from the thought of God and the truth of God is that which concerns us now — the problem of the Jew.

The third mystery not to be understood apart from God is the outward universe which we see. No theory of science can escape, finally, the need for a great first cause. If you reduce all that now is back to one primordial germ you are still compelled to account for the existence of that germ, and you have simply crowded God that far back. You cannot do without Him there, at that point.

The other insoluble mystery apart from God is the unique personality of Jesus, But when God is brought into these roblems, all these things, though they may remain in some egree mysteries, are accounted for. The reason rests satised, because God is felt to be an adequate explanation.

T. I have said that the Jew is the miracle of history. onsider for a moment the elements of the problem preented to the thoughtful student of Jewish history. The ew is the most ancient of peoples; so ancient that Disveli could reply to the lord who taunted him with his ewish birth: “Sir, you are proud of your ancient decent; but in the veins of the meanest Jew there flows lood compared to which the blood of the proudest noble ditch water.” Yet this Jew, the most ancient of men,; the most modern of men. No man of modern times is ore intensely modern. He lives prominently and practically 1 the present, and enters victoriously into all the ways and ioughts of modern life. Dispersed for centuries among 1 nations, without any national center, without a national ipital, national government, a national flag — with no naonal rallying point whatever, secular or religious, yet enting always eagerly into the life about him wherever peritted to do so; becoming prime minister here, banker there, erchant, author, composer, always in the front rank of his me, he has never been absorbed into that life, never effaced. For ages the object of infamous, unreasoning and deyish hatred; plundered, persecuted and outraged in every atural right, every tenderest sensibility; unique in his ifferings no less than-in every other respect, he has never en driven into hatred, never into conspiracy, never into sloyalty. Wherever the Jew lives he isloyal to the govnment under which he lives; and even in the infamous srsecutions and provocations which he is enduring in ussia to-day, the Jew is never found among the nihilists, meyer found among the conspirators who threaten the life ‘the emperor and the stability of his throne. To go back of the present, the Jew, shut up in his wretched ghetto, enduring as he did the unspeakable brutalities of the dark ages, always keener, always subtler, and always stronger with the strength of indomitable and unconquerable perseverance than those who persecuted him, kept alive the ideals of the civic and family virtues, as he kept alive learning.

All other ancient peoples, again, have gone down under the law of degeneracy. That inflexible law, inexorable in its effect upon the Gentile, never touches the Jew. The Jew has seen the conquerors of his people, two or three thousand years ago, descend steadily in the scale of national influence and of personal character until they have become objects of pity or contempt, yet he abides in undiminished vigor cf mind and body. The fellahin of Egypt, the peasantry of Syria, and the fever-smitten inhabitants of the Euphrates valley, remain the representatives to our own time of the great conquering nations that overran the Holy Land; but the Jew never was more virile, aggressive and capable, nor ever stronger in position in the affairs of the world than he is to-day. He is in the very forefront of a civilization so relentlessly material that it crushes beneath its chariot wheels everything that is weak. The Jew not only stands before it to-day, but guides it. No wonder the sceptical Renan said: “The philosophy of history fails utterly to account for the Jew.”

II. But suppose for one moment, my hearers, that the history of this people is designedly exceptional. Suppose it pleased God away back in the ages to detach from the peoples of the earth one man; to make of him first a family, then a tribe, then tribes, and then a nation; and to entrust to this man, this family, this tribe, these tribes and this nation a unique mission to the world. Suppose, in short, that Israel is set apart of God a representative people, a teaching nation, whose sublime mission is to make Him.

A4 known among all the nations of the earth; then the phenomena of Jewish history at once become luminous with meaning, and all that is strange and all that is inexplicable in the light of mere philosophy is explained. The mind at once responds to that explanation of these phenomena — at once pronounces it’ adequate.

And why should this be thought a violent supposition? We all believe that individuals, through all ages, have been raised up of God for special ministries; we believe that God has again and again interfered beneficently in human affairs, sending deliverers, teachers, leaders — special men with special ministries to their own time, or to their own nations. Why, then, should it be thought incredible that God should raise up a nation to have a-special and unique ministry to all the nations, and to all times? And then, because entrusted with a perpetual ministry, that they should be preserved through all mutations and dangers?

If we say that a man is immortal till his work is done, why should it not be true of a people? That in Israel God did this thing is an explanation of the whole mystery of Jewish history; that is precisely the place which the Bible gives to the Jew in human history and human affairs.

When Frederick the Great asked the court preacher for an unanswerable proof of the inspiration of the Bible, he answered, “The Jew, your Majesty, the Jew.” When Napoleon asked the archbishop of Milan for the briefest possible argument in support of revealed religion, the archbishop pointed s silently -toMarshal Massena, a Jew. You know what the Protestant preacher meant. You know what the Roman Catholic archbishop.meant. You know that the Scriptures contained in propheticlform the history / of the Jews, written before it was enacted; that the Scriptures contained predictions concerning the Jews uttered so long before the events occurred that no human foresight could have anticipated them; and that these predictions were fulfilled with absolute literalness, thus authenticatit the book which contained them as of God.

We may, by long observation of the sources of hum: action and motive, forecast with some degree of correctne the immediate future; we may be able to form a corre judgment of what is likely to occur within the next year the movement of human affairs; but the Jewish Scriptur contain predictions concerning that people written centuri before the fulfillment of them, so that it would simply impossible for human foresight to have anticipated ther Furthermore, these predictions are so minute, detailed a specific that they could not possibly be fortunate guesse You know that in proportion as a prediction is detaile minute and specific, there is excluded the possibility of; accidental fulfillment. If I should predict that a mi would be murdered here to-morrow, and a man was mu dered, that would not necessarily prove that I am a proph as it is alas! no uncommon thing for a man to be murder in these days. But if I should say that the man wou be murdered on the corner of Main and some other stree that he would be a Chinaman; that he would be murder with a certain weapon; that the wound would be inflicted a certain place; that he would live so many minutes, a that his assailant would be another man, whose name a peculiarities I gave, you would be warranted in sayi: either that I was in the secret of the slayer’s purpose, or é! that I had the prophetic vision. Now the Jewish Scriptut contain predictions concerning the people of Israel so a cient, so minute and specific that the fulfillment is no I miraculous than the prophecy.

It comes to this, and this is what the court preacher a the archbishop of Milan meant when they pointed to t Jew as the unanswerable proof on the one hand of the. spiration of Scripture, and on the other hand of the trt of revealed religion, that the Jew verifies the Scriptures his history, and that the Scriptures in their foreview explain the mystery of that history. In other words, Jewish history authenticates the Bible and the Bible explains, as it foretells, Jewish history.

III. Let us, before we review swiftly that magnificent epic of the Jew, gather up from Scripture the declared purpose of God in establishing on the soil of Palestine, a peculiar people to be in a unique sense His own, bound to Him in a peculiar covenant, and charged by Him with a worldministry.;

I read very briefly the passages which define the fourfold trust committed to the people of Israel, and the reason, upon God’s part, for. thus selecting these people and for bringing them into such a relation to Himself.

1. First, then, Israel was raised up to be a witness to the unity of God in the midst of universal idolatry, pantheism, polytheism.

“Hear, O, Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy vi:4).

To the Jew was committed the preservation of that primal truth, once the common possession of the race, that God is one. We are now so familiar with that fact; it is, so to speak, a part of our very consciousness, that it is very difficult for us to consider how absolutely it was lost by all nations except this one. For centuries no other people believed that truth, or taught it; Israel alone was a witness to the unity, the oneness of God.

That Israel, previous to the Babylonian captivity (but never since then), often fell into idolatry is most true; but equally true is it that, under God, the Jew has been the teacher of monotheism to the earth. No Gentile nation, untouched by Jewish influence, ever became monotheistic. I will read again from Isaiah xliii:10 —

“Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, and Mylservant whom

I have chosen; that ye may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He; before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me.”

This, then, first of all, was the mission committed to Israel; to know God, and to be a witness to the great truth that God is one. And I ask you to consider the immense significance of that fact. Consider the bearing of it upon the necessity for a revelation from God if men are ever to know God. Consider the bearing of it upon the mission of Israel to the race.

2. Then secondly, Israel was separated from the*nations that she might illustrate to them the blessedness of serving and obeying the one true God.

“Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee, O people saved by Jehovah?” (Deut. xxxiii:29).

“Happy is that people whose God is Jehovah” (Psalms cxliv:15).

The history of Israel obedient, is an unanswerable vindication of the truth of these texts. Did you ever think that this earth never saw a world-monarchy, a power like Babylon or Medo-Persia, or Greece or Rome so long as that little nation of Israelites kept its covenant with Jehovah? Think of it. Surrounded by warlike peoples, each mightier than herself, that little Jewish commonwealth dwelt in perfect safety under the shadow of the Almighty. So perfect did God balance nation against nation that no one of them could permit another to acquire the Holy Land. Just as Belgium or Switzerland keep their national existence in Europe, not by numbers or military prowess, but by the watchful jealousy of the greater nations surrounding them, so Israel abode in prosperity and peace in the olden time — an object lesson to the idolatrous heathen. Pastor Oberlin led his peasant parish in the Vosges mountains to adopt a better agriculture by fertilizing one acre in a large field. When the wheat came up that acre was greener and more prolific than the rest of the field. Just so the peace, prosperity and splendor of ancient Israel was God’s object lesson to the nations. Remember, there never was a world-conqueror or a world-monarchy until Israel had broken her covenant with Jehovah.

There is a very remarkable Scripture bearing upon the relation of the national Israel to the Gentile nations which I will read:

“When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel’ (Deut. xxxii:8).

Could anything be more explicit? The very distribution of the earth among the nations was with careful reference to the children of Israel.. -

3. The third purpose of God in creating this people was that they might be the writers, preservers and transmitters of His inspired words:

“Behold I have taught you statutes and judgments * * * for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which hear all these statutes, and say surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’ (Deut. iv:5, 6).

This passage scarcely requires comment. No one questions that the Bible came to us from the Jew, nor that the whole vast fabric of modern civilization — of any civilization which is characterized by liberty, regulated by law — rests upon the statutes of God revealed to and preserved by the children of Israel. The Jew has not only brought to us the sublime truth-that God is one, but he has brought to us from God the decalogue. Do you doubt that? Will you, then, kindly tell me where Moses got the law? He was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians — did he ’ get the decalogue from them? Nay, verily, Egyptian learning is open to our study to-day, but it neither contains the law of Moses nor anything in the remotest degree like it. But I read farther under this head, this time from the New

Testament. Ah! I wish the Gentile church really believec what the New Testament tells it concerning the place o: the Jew in the counsels of God, past and future. 1 reac from Romans iii:1, 2: —

“What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there o:

circumcision? Much every way, chiefly because that unto then were committed the oracles of God.”

This, then, is part of the mission of Israel, to receive Divine communications, that through them these commu. nications may reach the rest of the world, and none o: them have ever come to the world but through the Jew — none of them. It is the Jew’s Bible I hold in my hand and it is God’s Bible back of that, and it is the Chris tian’s Bible, because God has sent it to us through the Jew.

4. The fourth purpose of God in calling out and separating this people was that to them might be committee the Messianic promise; that is, it was ordained of Goc that out of this nation should come the supreme Prophe and Priest and King and Redeemer for the whole earth.

I do not raise the Messianic question — whether Jesu of Nazareth was the Messiah. I believe with every fiber of my being He was, but this question will be taker up, if the Lord will, two weeks from to-night.

To recapitulate: The fourfold purpose of God in constituting the people of Israel was — First, that they migh be a witness to the unity of God; second, to illustrat the blessedness of serving the one true God; third, to receive the revelations and communications that God migh make to this world; fourth, to produce the Prophet of th

world, the Priest of the world, the King of the world, an the Saviour of the world.

IV. It remains now to sketch as briefly as possible th past history of this wonderful people. That history, a 5° you know, falls into distinct epochs. There is, first of all, the genesis, or origin of the people, in the call of Abraham.

“Now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee’ (Gen. xii:1-3).

Can you point to me a passage in this Bible which revokes that last promise? Can you bring me one single illustration from history of a nation that has persecuted the Jew and escaped chastisement? If I had no other proof that this Bible is inspired the literal fulfillment in human history of that last promise would be to me the convincing, unanswerable demonstration that this book is from God. Never, never, has that statement been revoked. No nation ever persecuted the Jew and escaped national retribution. Haman is always hanged ultimately on the gallows prepared for Mordecai.

Here, too, we have the Messianic promise: “And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

And so Abraham, called from an idolatrous nation, becomes the first Hebrew. Here begins the patriarchal period which extends to the Egyptian captivity. I need not dwell upon that. The stories of the patriarchs were learned at our mothers’ knee. We know the whole story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.and Joseph, and of how, in the lifetime of the patriarch Jacob, the descendants of this man Abraham, all went down into Egypt.

The next great event in Jewish history was the Exodus. God sent that wonderful man, Moses, authenticating him by mighty works, to deliver his people. You remember the story of the Exodus, how he brought the tribes out from under the despotism of the mighty Pharaoh; how he brought them into the wilderness, where they wandered forty years in the school of God, and of how, finally, Joshua led them into the land promised to Abraham and his seed in an everlasting covenant.

There is, in the purpose of God, an inseparable connection between the Jew and that land. Always bear that in mind. It is the key which unlocks many prophetic secrets. Remember that it was Jesus who said the holy city should be trodden down of the Gentiles only till the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled.

Established in the covenanted land under the leadership of Joshua, there followed the third distinct phase of national life — the times of the Judges. The government was a theocracy, administered at first through elders, and afterward, when declension had set in, by special deliverers and rulers known as judges. Becoming dissatisfied with the government of an invisible King, the people went to Samuel, the Prophet, and asked him that a king like the kings of the nations be given them. God’s ominous answer was: “They have rejected me from being their king,” and they chose Saul because he was the largest and strongest man among them. Here began the fourth or monarchical period,

I need not dwell upon these things; they are perfectly familiar to all readers of the Bible. You will remember that after Saul’s failure God chose a king — David, “a man ‘after his own heart.” With David he entered into that wonderful covenant which secures to Messiah his earthly throne. Under David, and Solomon his splendid son, the kingdom. came to its greatest wealth and power. After Solomon’s death the kingdom was divided, ter tribes going off with Jeroboam to set up the kingdom of Samaria, and two tribes — Judah and Benjamin — retaining possession of Jerusalem and the temple. Then followed the long history

of the divided monarchy, a history of deadly wars and a se. Oe on hatred. They all again and again fell into idolatry, and at last Israel, and (some 200 years after) Judah, were carried into captivity.

The period of the divided monarchy was made illustrious by the mighty ministry of the prophets.

With the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the captivity of Judah, began that long period which still continues, known to Scripture as “the times of the Gentiles.” In the book of Daniel, who was a prophet of the captivity, we have this period described. The image-vision of Nebuchadnezzar gives the Gentile view of it; the wild-beast vision of Daniel the Divine view. The sum of both is that Gentile dominion will continue until the Ancient of days shall come and set up His kingdom. Remember, the end of Gentileism is not brought about by peaceful means — the stone smites the image and it falls into ruin.

After seventy years a remnant of Jews, some 40,000 in number, were permitted to return and rebuild the holy city, Jerusalem, and the temple, thus beginning the fifth historic period. There, but never wholly free from Gentile domination, except for a moment under the Maccabees, they remained until the destruction of Jerusalem and the final dispersion of the Jews in the year 70 by the Romans under Titus.

And yet this period is, even to the mere historian, the most momentous and significant in any in all the long, checkered history of the Israel of God, for sixty-five years pefore its tragic close, there was born in Bethlehem the Man of Nazareth and of Calvary, revered by thoughtful Jews as the greatest of their teachers, worshipped by us Christians as the Son of God. Into this question I do not, however, now enter; reserving theldiscussion of the unique claims and personality of Jesus to a subsequent occasion,

And now with the dispersion of the year A. D, 70, begins the sixth and in many respects, the saddest, period of the whole long history of the Jews. As a Gentile, I

would veil it if I could. Nothing, in all the history of the Gentile nations, is so infamous, so inexcusable, so utterly without reason, as the treatment of the Jews in their dispersion during 1400 long years by those who called themselves “Christians.” If the Jew does not hate the name, it is because he is the most forgiving as he is the most patient of men. And yet I stand here to deny that the Jew was ever persecuted by any true Christian. The time of his infamy synchronizes with the time of supremacy of the great apostate church, which held the minds and the consciences of men as in a vise for centuries. Then and under that influence, the so-called Christian persecutions took place. It is simply a fact of history that with the return to purer Christianity — in other words, to essential Christianity — there came, gradually at first, but with ever increasing rapidity, the removal of the sore burdens that rested upon the poor dispersed Jew, until to-day he stands, in all the Protestant nations, our brother man.

In England he has been prime minister, and in the United States there is not, nor has there ever been, an anti-Jewish statute. There are probably about 9,000,000 Jews at the present time. Where are they? They are dispersed among all nations of the earth. You cannot go anywhere without finding the Jew.

In the beginning of this discourse I said that the Scriptures account for the Jew, and that the Jew, in turn, is the ever-living everywhere-present, verification of the Scriptures. Now just here, in this fact of his world-wide dispersion, is an illustration of that two-fold truth.

I turn for a moment to the xxviii, xxix and xxx chapters of Deuteronomy. Written more than three thousand years ago, in the wilderness of Moab, before the tribes had gone into the land, before the nation had been constituted, these chapters contain in a prophetic form a synopsis of the entire history of the chosen people from that day to this — closing with such a prophecy as might be taken bodily for a description of the present-day Israel.

See how true to subsequent history this most ancient prophecy is, First there is the promise of blessing consequent upon obedience:

“And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth’ (Deut. XXVili :I).

Then follow the warnings of the judgments which were (0 follow disobedience (Read Deut. xxviii:58-66).

How wonderfully, with what exact literalness, this passage has been fulfilled. It is literally true this day of the Jews in Russia, where the largest body of Jews is gathered. You will find, if you trace the dispersion through the hisory of the last 1800 years, that wherever the great body »f the Jewish people are gathered there, invariably, they ire persecuted. Here and there in every age they are yersecuted. In Russia there are 4,000,000 Jews, possibly 1,500,000, and surely every generous and kindly heart is ouched with the story that comes to us of their cruel suferings,

Another thing has always been true; wherever the Jew s persecuted he is orthodox; he believes that the prophecies vill be literally fulfilled in him. Wherever the Jew has est, wherever he is protected by the law equally with all ther men, his immense capacity brings him wealth and ower, and gradually he ceases to believe in the literal fulliment of his prophecies as he loses all desire to go back to he Holy Land or to have his national life reconstituted. /May they bide Jehovah’s time in peace and honor, but nay they also remember that Jehovah’s time for Israel’s

wa

i oa] restoration will surely come, for he has sworn it. Rest here, O Israel! but do not forget to say: ‘This year here; the next at home.”

Such, briefly and most inadequately sketched, is the past history of the Jews.