The Advantage to Being a Jew, No. 2
RO18-01

© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1975)

"For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, and costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble, his work will be shown for what it is because they will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames" (1 Corinthians 3:11-16).

"So, we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it" (2 Corinthians 5:9).

"For we must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10).

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong. There is no favoritism" (Colossians 3:23-25).

"I am coming soon. My reward is with Me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done" (Revelation 22:12)

Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4).

Because we have living human spirits as a result of regeneration (the new birth), it is possible for God to communicate to us. That communication, however, can be completely blocked out by sin which is unconfessed in the life of the believer. So, we begin our study of the Word of God as always with a moment of personal examination of your own spiritual condition in order to make confession of known sins to God the Father as may be necessary in order to remove any barrier to the Spirit of God able to teach you this morning. ...

The Religious, Unbelieving Jew

Please turn to Romans 3 as we continue looking at the advantages of the being a Jew. As you remember the context here of Romans 3, the apostle Paul has discredited the Jews who have been claiming salvation simply on the basis of the fact that they are the chosen people of God. So, the apostle Paul has been very systematically showing them and pointing out to them that just because they were the chosen earthly people of God did not ensure that they would enjoy eternal life. So, the unsaved religious Jew hears this, and he reacts with indignation, and he strikes back by challenging Paul as to what the advantage is in being born a Jew at all then. Certainly the history of antisemitism, that we looked at in some detail last time, with its repeated nightmares of persecution for the Jewish people has shown that there is much disadvantage in being a Jew.

So, this argument seems to have some validity: "What good is it to be a Jew then, if you, Paul, are saying that this does not ensure eternal life for us?: Well, the religious, unsaved Jew then poses a second challenge as well, and this is in reference to the work of all the Mosaic ritual. This ritual is summed up in the act of circumcision. The second question is: "So, if is of no value to have been born a Jew, what is the value of all this ritual we've been going through: all the Mosaic ceremony; all of the animals we've been sacrificing; all of the holy days we've observed; and, so on.

What Profit is Circumcision?

So, Paul answers that question with a question about circumcision. The question is: "Or what profit is there of circumcision?" The word "or" is the Greek word "e," and it is is pronounced as "a." It's a second challenge from the unbelieving, religious Jew. The word "profit" is the Greek word "opheleia." "Opheleia" means "gain" or "benefit." This is the question of: what is the value of something? So, what is the value? What is the gain? The words "is there" is not in the Greek, but the word "circumcision" is, and it's a word we have seen many times. It's the word "peritome." "Peri" means "around," and "tome" means to cut: so, "peritome" means "to cut around," which describes the act of circumcision on the male child.

This ritual act had a very definite meaning. It portrayed the removal of the old sin nature; or, as it's referred to: "the flesh." This is what happens in salvation. The power of the old sin nature is removed at salvation. So, the very act of circumcision on the male child was a picture (a ritual) which portrayed this removal of the power of the old sin nature over the individual.

This question is more than just the act of circumcision as such. Actually, what this objector (this religious, unbelieving Jew) is bringing up is the question of all the Mosaic ritual system: all of this system of worship; of priesthood; and, of everything else that was involved. He says, "So, what's the value of all that?" Well, the value was, of course, that it did illustrate certain Bible doctrine principles (truths) which were actually later recorded in the written revelation of Scripture.

So, the apostle Paul answers both these questions that are posed in verse one: "What's the advantage of having been born a Jew? What's the profit of the act of circumcision and all of the Mosaic ritual?" He answers them in verse 2 with the words: "Much every way." The word "much" is the Greek word "polus." "Polus" points back to that word in verse one: the word "advantage." This word connotes a superiority, or some kind of preeminence for the Jew. So, "much" refers back to the "advantage." Paul's point is that there is much advantage.

He says furthermore, "It's in every way." Let me put it this way. The word "expression" in the Greek is the word "katapas." "Kata means "according to," and "pas" means "every;" so, the expression here is "according to every possible way." So, in other words, no matter how the Jew was persecuted, he still possessed a certain preeminence above all the gentile heathen nations that surrounded him. No matter how dark the situation was for the Jew at any point in history, he still had a certain preeminence going for him which the gentiles (or as they're called in the Hebrew, the "gor," the heathen nations round about him) did not have this as an advantage, which he describes as being: "In every way ('tropos')." "Tropos" means "fashion." So, we translate this as: "Much, to every way, or in every fashion."

Then, having declared that there are many advantages to having been born a Jew, the apostle Paul doesn't say, "Now, I'll list them for you: one, two, three, four. This is the advantage of having been born to the Jewish commonwealth." Instead, he takes one, and he identifies it with the word which is translated as "chiefly." In the Greek, it's the word "protos." "Protos" means "first." It denotes the first in a series of things. So, we would say. "In the first place. This is the greatest." By this word, Paul is indicating that he's not going to list all the advantages, but he will give them the number one advantage.

Now, what would you think would be the greatest advantage that any human being could have on the face of the earth, especially a human being who was born to a unique people – a group of human beings on the face of the earth that God selected as His special chosen people? What would be the great advantage of having been born into that category? The word "chiefly" ("protos") means "in the first place." The greatest thing for having been born a Jew is this.

Then he adds another word in the Greek: "hoti," which means "because." There is a very great advantage (chiefly), and "because" is going back and explaining what he means by: "Much in every way." Then the Greek has another word ("gar"), which doesn't show up in English, which here means, "for example." So, the translation really goes like this: "Much, according to every way or fashion, for, first of all, because" (or "for example").

Now what is the great advantage? Here he's going to present it: "Because," he says, "to them, we're committed." The word "committed" is a rather distinct word here: "pisteuo." "Pisteuo" normally means "to believe." It means to exercise faith. Here the word "pisteuo" means "to entrust" or "to commit." It is aorist tense, and it's referring to the fact that, at some point in time, God entrusted something complete to the Jewish people. It is passive. That means that the authors received this information because it was a written expression. It is indicative. It's a statement of fact.

The Oracles of God

Now what is the finest thing (the finest advantage – the chief advantage) that the Jew had? "To him was entrusted" something, and he calls it "the oracles of God." The word "oracles" is important. It's the Greek word "logion." This word in the Greek language refers to "utterances" or "pronouncements of God." It is doctrine in the form of written propositions of truth – the pronouncements of the living God ("the oracles of God).

This word is used many times in the Bible. So, it gives us kind of a good clue as to what it means. For example, in Acts 7:38, this word is used in the Greek Bible, and it refers to the Mosaic Law. In Romans 3:2, it's used in reference to the writings of the Old Testament authors. In Hebrews 5:12, "logion" is again used in the Greek Bible. Here it refers to the substance of doctrine – just doctrine in general. Then in 1 Peter 4:11, it's used of the utterance of God to all the Christian teachers of the New Testament. So, whether it's in the Old Testament or whether it's in the New Testament, what God has given us in the book that we call the Bible is called the "logion of God."

The Very Words of God

The reason that this word is important is because, in our day, the Bible is being challenged as a book that has propositions of God's truth. It is challenged as being a book that has propositions of divine viewpoints. Instead, it is presented as a book that reflects the history of a people; what they thought about God; and, how they understood God. But they do not view the Bible as being actually the very words of God. Anybody who says that immediately shows you that he does not understand the Greek language, because scattered throughout the Bible, in reference to Old Testament Scripture and New Testament Scripture, is this word "logion." And the word "logion" does not refer to simply a history, or the impressions, or the ideas of a people. It only applies to one thing: someone who stands up and makes a pronouncement. It's an announcement type of thing. It is a declaration of something. And it applies to all these declarations that we call Bible doctrine principles.

Verbal Plenary

Now the source of these oracles is God. The Greek word for "God" is "theos." It is specifically, in this case, "the God." It has the specific article, and therefore, it refers to God the Father. Or, precisely, it is the pronouncements from God the Father. Now, how did we get this from God the Father? Well, we got it by what we call the doctrine of inspiration. The doctrine of inspiration we describe as being "verbal plenary, which means that every word in the original Hebrew and the Greek was given by God the Holy Spirit to the writer. Furthermore, "plenary" means that the whole thing (everything that is contained in every book of the Bible) was put there by God the Holy Spirit. The authors did not make this up. They did not exercise their judgment, and come to certain conclusions, and so on.

This was a direction from God the Father, and the very words that they used were given to these authors. That's why nobody can study the Bible unless you know the meaning of the very words that are in the Bible – not the English words, but the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words. There is no way to come to a fullness of the understanding of the mind of God except from these two languages. That's why God preferred Hebrew. That's why God preferred Greek. Hebrew was a picture language. It was not as definite. But when you come to Greek, you have a very definite, precise, exact language. So, what we found reflected in a pictorial way in the Old Testament, with its religious system of the rituals; sacrifices; images; and, so on, is called out in specific detail when you come to the New Testament.

So, it is important to recognize that when we read the Bible, we are literally taking into our souls the mind of God. We are literally listening to God's speech. That's why you should not buy a red-letter Bible. A red-letter Bible is an insult to God Himself. A red-letter Bible is a Bible that takes the words of Jesus, and anytime the Bible records something that Jesus said directly, it's put in red letters. But the implication is that here in the red letters, you have something very special. But the rest of the black letters – that's not as special. But the Bible is entirely the "logion" of God. It is the very speech of God, and it is given to us by God the Holy Spirit.

Inerrancy

For that reason, the Bible is not only inspired; that is: God gave the revelation; God led in the words; and, God the Holy Spirit gave great ideas, the whole concept, and the whole thing, but it is also inerrant. You must know what this word means. The word "inerrant" means "without mistakes." When the Bible was originally written, in the original manuscripts, it did not have a mistake in any way. There was not a word in there that should not be in. There was not an idea that was not true. It was totally, absolutely perfect.

Fundamentalism

Now we consider ourselves to be in the conservative circles of Christianity. However, there is another camp which has divided itself away from basic fundamentalism. Basic fundamentalism holds to the inerrancy of the Bible. There is another group of conservatives which are represented by some very powerful schools of higher education, and some very powerful, religious, ecclesiastical organizations, and some very significant seminaries (schools that prepare men for the ministry). These have (during the past dozen years) gradually remove the word "inerrant" from their doctrinal statements. So, if you read the doctrinal statements of these organizations, you will find that they say, "We believe in the inspiration of the Bible," but they no longer believe in the inerrancy. Some of them actually say it, and some of them just drop "inerrancy," and don't say anything more about it.

There is a book which has just recently come out which is now proving to be a bombshell within conservative Christianity. It was written by a man named Harold Lindsell who was formerly the editor of "Christianity Today." "Christianity Today" is a periodical which represents the viewpoint of Billy Graham and a group of people that are known as neo-evangelicals. They are the group who want to remove the concept of inerrancy from Scripture. This man was once the editor of the very magazine that is in the forefront of championing rejecting that the Bible was written without a single mistake. They want to leave the door open that the writers of the Bible somehow made a mistake about history, or they made a mistake about numbers, or they made a possible error of judgment here, and so on. But the basic doctrines are all true, and God has inspired this, but they want to preserve an opening that the writers of the Bible could have interjected certain mistakes in what they wrote. Why?

Because the neo-evangelicals have become obsessed with reapproachment went to the liberals. That's the only reason. The liberals hate the concept of a Bible that has no mistakes, because once you accept a Bible that has no mistakes, then there is no more discussion. Then reason can no longer override anything that the Word of God says. If the Bible says something, that's it. That is now the voice. That is the "logion" of Almighty God, and you can't debate that. So, in order to be able to have some fellowship with liberals, they want to get rid of inerrancy.

Well, Mr. Lindsell has written a book called The Battle for the Bible. And lo and behold, of all things, what does this former editor of the leading magazine antagonistic to the concept of inerrancy do? He comes out, and in his book, he takes a strong and definite stand such that, if you are a New Testament Christian, you must not only hold to inspiration, but that the Bible also teaches inerrancy – that the God who could inspire the writers, and the words he uses, and the concepts he was expressing, must also be the God who is perfect enough to preserve that writer from having interjected anything of error into the Scriptures.

Well, neo-evangelicals can be very asinine in their own way. I've discovered that they have a particular knack for that. And if you don't know what that word means, go home and look it up. I won't explain it any more than that to you. But this group is one of the leading proponents of a West Coast seminary. The president of the school came out in opposition to this book. And one of the condemnations being leveled toward this book is that this book with this idea (that inerrancy is the truth about Scripture) is going to cause divisions among conservatives. And we're going to have the same kind of two camps as there was in the 1920s when the conservatives stood on one side (the fundamentalists stood on one side) for an inspired Bible full of supernatural miracles; for the deity of Christ; and, for all those fundamentals of Scripture; and, on the other side were the liberals (the modernists, as they were called) who were antagonistic to these things.

I marvel at the mentality of men who are educated men; who know something about the Bible; and, who are viewed as leaders in the Christian community, and they all get up and say, "He should not have said what he said in that book about inerrancy. He should not have taken such a strong stand on inerrancy, because it's going to cause division among us as Christians." What difference does it make if there are divisions among us as Christians? That's exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ said. There will be legitimate divisions among Christians over doctrine, because some people are going to come up with true doctrine, and some people are going to come up with false doctrine. And this will cause divisions. The Lord Jesus Christ said, "Don't make any mistake. When I come into the world and people listen to me, I'm a divider. I'll set a mother against her daughter. I'll set a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. I am a creator of division." Why? Because Jesus was a bad man? Because he was a sinner? No, because like to Pilate He could say, "I am the truth." When Pilate wanted know what the truth was, he didn't wait for the answer. But Jesus could have told him, as he did to the disciples in the upper room: "I am the truth; the way; and, the life."

The reason there are divisions among conservatives is because some conservatives do not have sound doctrine. Therefore, they are divided from those that do. When we see the word "logion" in Scripture, and applied to the Old and New Testament, you are referring to the very speech of God. Are you trying to tell me that the God who can talk to us, and who can give us a revelation, can't talk straight? He can't talk to these writers and guide them so that they use words and ideas that are absolutely right and true, and that somehow the human author is going to override the speech of God and slip in some errors? It is amazing to me that anybody who is a conservative Bible person (a Bible Christian) would even dare to suggest that the idea of inerrancy is not the case and is not true – that the Scriptures could have some error in them.

Bibliolatry

"Logion" stands for inerrancy. The source of these oracles of God are the Bible – the written book. You will notice, by the way, that the apostle Paul was not afraid of being accused of bibliolatry. Do you know what bibliolatry is? This is what the liberals would say against those of you who believe that the Bible is the Word of God; that it is actually the speech of God; that it is the propositions of truth that God has said; that it is inspired; and, that it is inerrant. They'll say, "Well, what you're doing is worshiping the Bible. You're no different than somebody who sets up an idol and bows down before it, and says, "Hail, wonderful idol. Hail, my god." They say, "You're putting the Bible up there, and you're bowing down to the Bible, and you're saying, "Hail, Bible. You are My God." That's bibliolatry.

Well, the apostle Paul wasn't afraid that some idiot was going to say, "Well, you're worshiping the Bible when you say that the Bible is absolutely perfect without error."

So, the result of the fact that the Jews had been given the "logion" of God was a very great advantage, because like Abraham, it enabled them to be saved, for one thing. It enabled them to go on to the super-grace level of maturity in their spiritual lives. It enabled them to avoid revisionism. This was simply the grace of God working for the Jewish people. As a matter of fact, the Jews were graced out from Abraham until the canon of the Old Testament was completed (all the books were written). Israel never earned it nor deserved this kind of grace. But all the divine revelation, and all the mind (the speech) of God which was put in writing came through Jews and to Jews. Israel had periods of reversionism. Periodically, the nation would fall into revisionism. Every time that happened, God brought them under discipline. Leviticus 26 tells you how God will take them through several stages. The fifth stage of discipline was being expelled from their land as the final stage of the cycle of discipline.

The unconditional covenants made to this nation have never yet been fulfilled. But because they are the Word of God (they are the speech of God), they will be fulfilled. These are still to come. The Abrahamic Covenant, and then, as it was confirmed in the Palestinian Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant – these are going to be fulfilled. Therefore, Israel has to have a future beyond the church age. No matter how many people try to kill the Jews, there will always be Jews. And the Jews as a nation have a future.

That's why our amillennial brethren are dead wrong. They're not only very dead wrong, but their error is very grave, because amillennialists say that there is no future for the Jews, and that the only future is to be found for the church. But the future of the Jews is tied with the "logion" of God. If God cannot speak truth in these covenants, then God is not to be trusted. If God could not produce an inerrant Bible (absolute, and without error), then God cannot be trusted.

The status of the Jews in the 20th century is twofold. First of all, there is the present status of Israel. Any benefits to the Jews in the church age come through faith in Jesus Christ. That's the only way a Jew can be benefited today. When he does that, he enters into union with Christ. In Christ, there is neither Jew more gentile. Therefore, the chosen people do not exist today. Do you understand that? Anytime some Jew comes along and says, "I'm part of God's chosen people," you, as a gentile, should say, "Is that right? Well, I am too." That is because the chosen people today are the believers in Christ – who are in the body of Christ, the church. The Jew himself is, in God's eyes, now absolutely zero. During this age, God does not recognize them as a nation. They are under the fifth stage of the cycle of discipline. They are scattered around the world. This happened in August, 70 A.D. From that day to this, they have been scattered. They are not His chosen people now.

However, the unconditional covenants which have come from the speech and the propositions of God's declarations – those must be fulfilled, but not during the church age. That's where the amillennialists make the mistake of saying, "These are being fulfilled during the church age." No amillennialist wants to tell you that the Bible is not going to be fulfilled. Any promise that God made, the amillennialist will say, "Of course, God's going to keep His word." One of the factors of the essence of deity is veracity. God is true. But the amillennialist says that God is fulfilling these covenants (these promises) during the siege.

The only advantage that a Jew has today, therefore, is to come under the 36 specific things that happen to a person at the point of salvation when he takes the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior (these 36 grace provisions), and then to go on to a spiritual maturity structure at the super grace level. That's all that a Jew has today.

The Future for the Jew

However, there is a future for the Jew as well. That future starts once the rapture of the church takes place. Then God again finds that He has a chosen people on this earth. Then again, He looks upon the Jew; He resumes His dealing with them; and, He brings them to conclusion. The last part of his dealings with them is called the tribulation period – a period of seven years. That's the end of the dispensation of the Jews. The tribulation will be a time of great evangelism, and that would be laid upon the Jew. That will be his responsibility. Thousands of Jews will be raised up as evangelists, along with Moses and Elijah. The Second Advent (when Jesus Christ comes to this world a second time after the rapture), then He will gather the Jews from all over the face of the earth, and complete the fulfilling of these unconditional promises (the covenants) to the nation.

The reason we say that they are unconditional is because the Jews can do nothing to frustrate this fulfillment. No matter how the Jew rejects God (and he has done a tremendous job of that), and no matter how unbelieving he is, God will discipline him and punish him (which God is doing), but God will never be frustrated in fulfilling these promises. They are not dependent upon anything the Jew does.

So, there will never be a generation without Jews alive on earth. The antisemitism of the devil is never going to succeed.

The finest hour of the Jew in the future is, of course, going to be in the millennium when he is the leading nation of the world under the maximum blessing of God, under David's greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Church is not the Kingdom

So, the Lord Jesus came in trying to fulfill all these things that were pictured by the animal sacrifices for providing salvation. This provision has been fulfilled by Him. The promises of the Jews' future as a nation has not been fulfilled. So, I warn you to be careful of any theological system (and that refers to most Protestant denominations today). Be careful of any theological system which devises some other fulfillment of the oracles of God except the literal fulfillment of the words that God recorded. The church, by these people, is made to be the kingdom which is promised in the Old Testament. The church is not the kingdom.

Feudalism

When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, a tremendous vacuum was created on the political scene of the world. There just was no authority. Rome was gone – the police power of the world. The Roman peace that brooded upon the whole world was suddenly stripped overnight. And when Rome fell, there was nothing, and chaos existed everywhere. The result, historically, you may remember, was a new system of human organization called feudalism. Feudalism brought a baron who became a supreme authority in a certain area over a certain territory. And he gathered together a number of people under him. He was their supreme leader. They worked his lands. They provided him with his wealth, and he in turn took care of them. He provided military care for them; he provided justice for them (acted as their judge); and, so on. The feudal system was an attempt to provide some stability in society after the Roman Empire fell.

The Fall of the Roman Empire

Well, along with the fall of the Roman Empire also came the vacuum religiously. At this point, the bishop of Rome (whom you call today the Pope) saw his opportunity to move in and to capture the dominant position in Christendom. And that's exactly what he did. He presented himself, as the representative of Christ on this earth, as being actually the "logion" of God on this earth. So, the pope said, "When I sit upon my official throne, and I speak to you, every word you hear falling from my lips is the speech of almighty God." That is true of the Pope today. That's why the Pope, at his discretion, can decide to promulgate a new doctrine.

Some years back, they decided to promulgate the doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, never died, but went to heaven alive, like Elijah and Enoch of the Old Testament. So, Mary was declared to have gone alive to heaven. She was also declared to be the Co-Mediatrix with Jesus Christ.

This is the Pope speaking as God. He is God's representative. When this all happened because Rome collapsed. The empire was in shambles from the attacks of the barbarians. So, the Roman Catholic Church, the religious dictatorship, came into its full blossom control.

The Reformation

Well, along comes the Reformation. It breaks the hold of the Roman Catholic Church on Christendom, and it goes back to the Bible (back to the Word of God). But there's one thing that it does not do. Rome said that the church was the fulfillment of the promises to the Jew. Rome said that the king of the Jews is the Pope. Rome said that the royalty of the Kingdom that God promised the Jewish people is made up of the princes of the church who are called cardinals, and that the Roman Catholic Church represented the fulfillment of God's promises to the Jews. They were the kingdom. And what did the reformers do? Almost to a man, the reformers came along and they accepted this Roman Catholic idea that the Jews would never realize, as a nation, the promises of God, but that these had now been transferred to the church.

Do you see why amillennialism is a very serious heresy? It is a very grievous heresy because it completely distorts the "logion" of God: the statements; the speech; and, the propositions of God's truth, and it completely distorts what Christians are to be doing. You've heard people say, "At our church, we're working for the Lord to bring in the kingdom." What kingdom? They mean what God promised the Jews. That's ridiculous.

Antisemitism

Interestingly enough, as you pursue what the Reformation churches did, as a result of their thinking that they were the fulfillment of the promises of the kingdom to the Jews, you will discover that the result was antisemitism. Amillennialism has been responsible for as much persecution of the Jews as the Spanish Inquisition was, because if the Jew was no longer God's favorite people, and if the Jew had no longer any kind of future in God's program, then the Jew was looked upon as someone that was under the wrath of God. And if somebody was under the wrath of God, it was the reasoning of the reformers that: "We should help God exercise His wrath, and we should persecute the Jews. So, the Jew has suffered everywhere that this amillennial viewpoint has been in dominance.

So, Paul says that all of the advantages that the Jew has emanate from one thing: from the fact that you possess the speech of God in written form. Whatever other advantages you have as a Jew, this is supreme above all. This is what makes you preeminent above all other people. However, like many Christians today, the Jew held his Bible in low esteem. You might be tempted to do the same thing. Of course, there are many ways in which you may demonstrate to us that you hold the Bible in low esteem. But don't think that you can argue us out of that position by telling us that you don't. Just because you say that you esteem the Bible doesn't mean a thing. There is, as the Lord said, an identification by one's words and actions that tell us the real truth about your attitude. For many people, the Bible is not held in the esteem that it should be as the very speech of God.

Philosophy

What people do is make the mistake of thinking that what the Bible reveals, human reason can also arrive at on its own, and that what is reasonable to man is what the Bible must mean by what it says. That is why the amillennialist, and why the liberals, want to destroy the concept of inerrancy. You have to get rid of inerrancy so that you can say that human reason will come up with the same conclusions as the Word of God. The philosophers tried that same stunt. Plato, Aristotle, and the whole bunch of them were trying to establish the fact that human reason, with its natural theology, will come out exactly with the conclusions that are revealed in the Bible. Yet, as the centuries rolled by, it was evidenced more and more that this is not true, and that man's reasoning takes him not to the Bible, but away from it. For this reason, those who have the Word of God are those who understand what God thinks.

You remember what Paul said to young Timothy in the New Testament – that these oracles of God had brought Timothy to spiritual sanity and to great happiness (2 Timothy 3:14-17). They made Timothy wise unto salvation and unto blessing in the Christian life. The Old Testament, with its Mosaic rituals, taught that the Jew could be saved, and it told the Jew how to be saved. So, the result was that multitudes of Jews were going to heaven, while multitudes of heathen among the gentiles were dying on earth and plunging into the eternal death of hell. The Jew had the advantage of knowing how to go to heaven. The gentiles did not get that specific information.

Israel was producing the great patriarchs and the great kings, while the gentiles were producing the Herods, the Pharaohs, the Belshazzar, and assorted other demon-possessed tyrants.

So, this is indeed the greatest thing that the Jews have, as Paul points out here. They have the Word of God. Jesus has come. He's fulfilled the basic promises to bring personal blessing. He will yet come to bring promises of national blessing to the Jewish people.

What advantage is it to be a Jew? "Much in every way; chiefly (specifically) in this one great way above all else: that to you was committed, in written form, the very speech of God. That's the Bible, if you hold this book in contempt, you will find your life an unhappy experience. You will find yourself subject to being a casualty in the spiritual conflict. You will find all the relationships of life to be disjointed. But if you recognize that the Bible is actually the speech of God, and thus the mind of God; and, if you have this mind, then you have a life that cannot move in any direction but happiness. That's God's promise. The Jew did not understand that. And because of that, instead of advantage, the Bible became the book that brought condemnation upon him. The Jews stands under the condemnation of the Word of God today.

So, while millions of Jews died at the hands of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, the saddest part about that story is to remember that those Jews put themselves in the same position as these nations did who did not have the oracles of God, because those Jews, when they died in Hitler's gas chambers, plunged into the eternal death of hell. If they thought they were having a terrible time under Hitler, how indeed they have found that they are going to have a terrible time for all eternity. Why? Because they ignored the Word of God.

Just remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus. When Jesus told him about being born-again, and Nicodemus looked at him puzzled, the Lord rebuked this teacher. This Rabbi said, "You're a teacher of the Bible, and you don't know enough about the Old Testament to have caught what Abraham understood; what all the patriarchs understood; and, what all the great leaders of our nation understood concerning how to be born-again through faith in the coming Messiah. I'm surprised at you, Nicodemus. Every one of those Jews that Hitler sent into hell had the same opportunity and the same advantage. Why is he there? Because he held in contempt the Bible, the written speech of God. Beware that you do not do the same.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1975

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