Sometimes I feel the heavy responsibility of being a teacher of God’s Word. James 3:1 says, “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.”

And it’s a particularly fearful responsibility in these times—in what I believe are the end times. Paul says to Pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1-4:

¹ I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: ² Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; ⁴ and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

I’m going to preach a word that I hope will encourage you about the future destiny of Israel and the Jewish people. But at the same time, my message will “convince” and “rebuke” those who teach or believe another gospel concerning Israel and the way in which this nation will be saved.

There are two major errors in the Church today that relate to Israel. One error is called “replacement theology.” This is the idea that because Israel rejected Jesus as their Messiah, then God has rejected Israel. And as a consequence of Israel’s fall, the Church, which is 99.9 percent Gentile, has by default now become God’s new and true Israel. When Israel fell, the Church picked up what Israel dropped—namely, Israel’s blessings. On the other hand, the former “Israel” is left with the curses. Tragically, one of the results of this replacement teaching is anti-Semitism. The thinking is, if God has cursed the Jews, then shouldn’t we curse them too?

(I’ve taught a number of times on replacement theology, and I have circulated a tape and a booklet that I wrote in which I try to show how it is a gross error and has been the cause of hundreds of years of Christian anti-Semitism.)

But there is another teaching that is also gaining a following among Christians—a teaching that stands at the opposite end of the spectrum of replacement theology. For this teaching says, “Because the Jews are the chosen people and the beloved of God, then God will save them and bless them without the necessity of believing in His Son. This doctrine teaches that God relates to the Jewish people according to the old covenant and that if they do good works and obey the law, they will be saved. But when it comes to the Gentiles, God relates to the them differently—according to another covenant altogether, a new covenant. The Gentiles can be saved only through trust in Jesus and His sacrifice to atone for their sins. This doctrine is often referred to as “dual covenant” theology. As the name implies, there are two distinct and separate covenants—one for the Jews and one for the Gentiles.

Now this “dual covenant” or “two covenant” teaching has been in the liberal Church for a while. But increasingly, it is now also gaining strength in certain evangelical circles. It’s a rather attractive teaching for Christians who want to show love to Jews after centuries of anti-Semitism—especially following the Holocaust. The problem is, such a teaching ends up being an extreme form of philo-Semitism, where our love for God’s chosen people causes us to view naively the Jewish people as a nation that can do no wrong.

Tragically, however, this dual-covenant theology tends to give Jewish people a false sense of security. If this new breed of Christians doesn’t seem to be too concerned about the Jewish people’s lack of faith in Jesus, then Jewish people may think to themselves: “Why bother seriously investigating the claims of Jesus? He might be good for the Gentiles, but He’s got nothing to do with me.”

This theology also discourages Christians from witnessing to their Jewish friends. I mean, why give them the gospel when they don’t need it?

And ironically, although this teaching would appear to be a solution to anti-Semitism, it is actually very anti-Semitic in a subtle kind of way. For encouraging a Jewish person to remain in unbelief is the the worst thing you could do, because you are withholding from that individual the only key that will unlock the door to eternal life.

My wife Ann and I had a meeting this past week with someone who is having a growing influence in the evangelical world—and who teaches dual-covenant theology. He has a mailing list of hundreds of thousands of Christians, and it’s not unusual for this man to speak to hundreds of “evangelical” pastors at a single conference. And when this man gets through teaching, many of these pastors no longer believe that Jewish people need Jesus.

So I feel I need to do what Paul told Timothy to do: to try and bring some correction to an unsound doctrine. Therefore, my subject is “how the new covenant is the one and only covenant by which all people are saved.”

And I believe that when this message is finished, you will come to see that, yes, God will save His people Israel. But you will also see that the people of Israel will not be saved without first coming to a very painful realization that they can’t be saved through the old covenant—because it’s impossible to adhere perfectly to the strict obligations of that contract and, even worse, there’s now no temple and no sacrificial system through which they can even receive God’s forgiveness for breaking His law.

When this message is finished, you will come to see that Israel will be saved when by faith in the Messiah they are covered and sealed with the blood of God’s new covenant—the blood of the final sacrifice, the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And I hope that by the end of this message, you will be motivated to do your part to comfort Israel through their painful process of salvation and to point them regularly to the only Person who has the cure for their condition—Yeshua, the Savior and the Great Physician.

I’m going to base most of what I say not on the New Testament, but actually on the Hebrew Scriptures, quoting Scriptures written solely by Jewish writers (of course, it is likely that Luke is the only non-Jewish writer in the New Testament). In this way, no one will be able to say that some of the strong things I about to say are any stronger than what the Jewish prophets themselves said concerning their own people and their need to be saved by the new covenant like everyone else—whether Jew or Gentile. The main foundation of my argument will be Jeremiah 30, 31, and 32. So let’s turn first to Jeremiah 30:11-14:

¹¹ “For I am with you,’ says the LORD, ‘to save you; though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, yet I will not make a complete end of you. But I will correct you in justice, and will not let you go altogether unpunished.

¹² ‘For thus says the LORD: “Your affliction is incurable, your wound is severe. ¹³ There is no one to plead your cause, that you may be bound up; you have no healing medicines. ¹⁴ All your lovers have forgotten you; they do not seek you; for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of your iniquities, because your sins have increased.” ’

Then we read in verse 24, “The fierce anger of the LORD will not return until He has done it, and until He has performed the intents of His heart. In the latter days you will consider it.”

Now let’s look at Jeremiah 31:22, “ ‘How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? For the LORD has created a new thing in the earth—a woman shall encompass a man.’ ”

We will continue by reading Jeremiah 31:31-34:

³¹ ‘Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—³² not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. ³⁴ No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’

And now in Jeremiah 32, we will examine verses 39-42:

³⁹ ‘Then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. ⁴⁰ And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me. ⁴¹ Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.’

⁴² ‘For thus says the LORD: “Just as I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will bring on them all the good that I have promised them.” ’

In Matthew 26:26-28, it says:

²⁶ And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’

²⁷ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. ²⁸ For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’

Now let’s read Hebrews 8:6-8:

⁶ But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.

⁷ For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. ⁸ Because finding fault with them, He says: ‘Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’ ”

And then verses 12 and 13 say:

¹² ‘For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’

¹³ In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

1. God is going to save His chosen people.

My first point is this: God is going to save His chosen people. We just read in Jeremiah 30:11, “ ‘ “For I am with you,” says the LORD, “to save you….” ’ ”

When will God save His people Israel? Well, it says in Isaiah 11:11, “It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people who are left, from Assyria and Egypt, from Pathros and Cush, ?from Elam and Shinar, from Hamath and the islands of the sea.”

When will the Lord save His people? At a time and during a period when He brings back His people to the land of Israel the “second time.”

The first time God brought His scattered people back to their land was following their Babylonian exile. The second time, I believe, is what we are beginning to see in our day and will peak in the day when the Messiah returns.

John Wesley wrote concerning that prophecy in Isaiah 11:11, “The first time…seems to be the deliverance out of Babylon: and the second deliverance must be in the days of the Messiah.”

The commentary by Jamieson, Faucett, and Brown says, “Therefore the coming restoration of the Jews is to be distinct from that after the Babylonish captivity, and yet to resemble it. The first restoration was literal, therefore so shall the second be; the latter, however,…shall be much more universal than the former.”

I personally believe that this “second” return began over 100 years ago and is continuing even at this very moment. This second recovery is a return from that scattering following the destruction of the second temple by the Romans more than 1,900 years ago. That exile was far more widespread than the first Babylonian exile. In fact, during this second exile the Jewish people ended up being scattered into more than 100 nations.

So successful was that second scattering that any notion of a massive Jewish return to the land of Israel was considered by most people to be virtually impossible—even by most Christians. It seemed so impossible that for the most part, Bible scholars and theologians spiritualized the hundreds of passages referring to second return. They spoke about the return to Israel as though it were not a literal return to a physical land, but rather a spiritual return—and often Christians interpreted those Old Testament prophecies as referring not to Israel but to the Church.

It’s understandable why they came to such conclusions. It’s hard to believe that the Jews—after having lived hundreds of years outside the land and having adopted the lifestyle and culture of the places where they were scattered—would ever want to come and live in a dust bowl of a land like Palestine under the Ottoman Turks.

But a little over a hundred years ago, that impossibility became a reality. Zionism was birthed. And I believe God sovereignly initiated a second return of His remnant Jewish people back to the promised land. And as I said, I am convinced that this second return is still in process.

In the last 13 years alone, more than a million Jews have returned to the land and more will come yet. So many more will come back this second time that Jeremiah says in an earlier chapter, in 16:14-16:

¹⁴ ‘Therefore behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘that it shall no more be said, “The LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,” ¹⁵ but, “The LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.” For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers.

¹⁶ ‘Behold, I will send for many fishermen,’ says the LORD, ‘and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.’

And Isaiah 11:11 says this “second time” will involve Jews coming back even from “the islands [or coastlands] of the sea.” I think of the Jews returning by ship from the coast of the Ukraine, from the port of Odessa—the work that the Ebenezer ministry is doing these days is a partial fulfillment of Isaiah 11:11. In fact, we will soon be celebrating the fact that Ebenezer has helped in one way or another to bring back more than 100,000 Jews to the land of Israel—half of whom we’ve brought by ship from the coasts of the sea.

We are seeing in our day that God is sovereignly bringing His people home a “second” and final time, just as He promised in His word. Why is God bringing them home? Because, as I mentioned earlier, God says in Jeremiah 30:11, “ ‘ “For I am with you,” says the LORD, “to save you….” ’ ”

And not only will it be a physical recovery to the land, but also a spiritual recovery to the Lord. In the same place where Isaiah mentions this “second time” recovery, he follows with these words in 12:1,2:

¹ And in that day you will say: ‘O LORD, I will praise You; though You were angry with me, your anger is turned away, and You comfort me. ² Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; “for YAH, the LORD, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.” ’

Salvation is God’s plan and purpose for His chosen people—and this salvation is going to occur during the course of Israel’s return to the land a “second time.” Aren’t you glad that you’re alive to witness this great and glorious event—this second time when God recovers His people Israel?

Well, that was my first point: God is going to save His chosen people. So far, just about every Christian I know who loves the Jewish people would agree with what I’ve just said. God is not finished with Israel. He still plans to save His chosen people in these last days.

2. God will save His people by putting them through a very painful experience.

But now I come to my second point—and this is where some of us might have a difference of opinion. While my first point was that God will save His people, my second point is that God will save His people by putting them through a very painful experience.

I’m going to show you this fact by going back to Jeremiah 30:11-14. The Lord says to Israel:

¹¹ ‘For I am with you,’ says the LORD, ‘to save you; though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, yet I will not make a complete end of you. But I will correct you in justice, and will not let you go altogether unpunished.’

¹² ‘For thus says the LORD: “Your affliction is incurable, your wound is severe. ¹³ There is no one to plead your cause, that you may be bound up; you have no healing medicines. ¹⁴ All your lovers have forgotten you; they do not seek you; for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of your iniquities, because your sins have increased.” ’

God’s promise to save His people is followed by His promise to inflict pain upon His people. God tells Israel in verse11 that He will “correct” them “in justice.” And He says in verse 14 that He has “wounded” them “with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one.”

Why does God inflict pain upon and even wound His precious chosen people? Is He really cruel?

Well, the fact is, this is God’s own way to save His people. God saves people who admit they need saving—when do you finally go and see a doctor? If you’re like me, you only go when you have to go. I had a growth on many hand for many months. Finally, I noticed that the growth had become painful. Being someone who hates pain, I went to a skin doctor and got that growth burnt off. And then the pain was gone and the growth was gone.

Most people don’t think that there’s anything wrong with them. If you’ve ever witnessed to people, you know that often the hardest task is to convince someone that he or she is a sinner. Almost everyone you talk to thinks he or she is basically a good person. It usually takes a painful experience of failure or a great fall to force people to admit that they are sinful and sick and need a cure.

In the same way, the same God who has promised on oath that He will save Israel will also take drastic steps to bring Israel to the place where they recognize that they have an affliction and have got to find a cure.

According to Jeremiah 30:11-14, God is like a physician. He wounds His patient in the sense that He cuts open the patient and exposes what’s deep inside—not to kill but to heal. Because only when Israel sees the reality of their hidden diseased condition will they realize that they desperately need help.

When and where will such a painful exploratory procedure take place? We read about this in Ezekiel 20:42-44:

⁴² ‘Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for which I raised My hand in an oath to give to your fathers. ⁴³ And there you shall remember your ways and all your doings with which you were defiled; and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight because of all the evils that you have committed. ⁴⁴ Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have dealt with you for My name’s sake, not according to your wicked ways nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel,’ says the Lord GOD.

Now a Scripture such as this is not read very often by Christian Zionists. Most Christian Zionists whom I know have this idea that if you can get the Jews back in the land, then that’s the answer. Now I’m a Christian Zionist too, but just because we’ve been able to help Jewish people return to Zion that doesn’t mean they’re now out of the woods yet.

In some ways, it’s here in Zion where the actual pain on the way to recovery really intensifies. It says in Isaiah 31:9 that the Lord’s “fire is in Zion” and that His “furnace is in Jerusalem.” It’s one thing to escape from anti-Semitism and persecution in the diaspora, but it’s a far worse thing to fall into the fire of God’s refining.

Hosea paints a graphic picture of what God is like toward His own chosen people. Let’s look at 5:14,15:

¹⁴ ‘For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no one shall rescue.

¹⁵ ‘I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.’

Here in the land of Israel, God has an appointment with His people. It’s a critical doctor’s appointment. The Great Physician is going to save His people Israel—no question about it. But He will not merely save them from their external enemies; He’s also going to save them from themselves—just as He saved you and me.

But as I mentioned earlier, in order to save His patient, God needs to expose the problems through a painful and revealing surgical procedure. The God of Israel is going to save His people from a deep, internal life-threatening condition. Like an oncology specialist, He’s going to save them from a spreading cancer, which only now are the people of this nation starting to wake up to.

There was a time when the nation of Israel was a wonder child. It was a nation that was born in a day but was already strong enough to defeat surrounding Arab armies much larger than its own. But the year 2004 is not like the heady days of 1948 when Israel declared its statehood and had the opportunity to show the world what an enlightened nation could be. And these days are not like 1967 when Israel amazed the world with it’s military prowess in the Six-Day War. Israel today is in crisis. Its soft underbelly is being exposed. It is threatened by serious political division within its own ranks. And many Israelis are becoming disillusioned with the kind of nation that Israel has become.

Instead of being “a light to the Gentiles” (Isaiah 49:6), Israel is increasingly looking like so many other darkened nations. It now has some of the highest rates of abortion and corporate corruption. Unlike those early Zionists with their kibbutz-style ideas of sharing all things in common, now vast gaps exist between the rich and the poor, and some 40 percent of Israeli children live below the poverty line. Almost daily, there are newspaper articles about sexual abuse and violence at home—and this country has one of the highest rates in the world of violence in public schools. Many people think that Israel is a very Jewish country religiously speaking, but in fact, less than a quarter of the population practice Judaism.

Going back to the abortion issue, Israeli Health Ministry statistics for 2002 show that almost 20,000 abortions were carried out in Israel that year. This comes at a time when the nation is facing a huge demographic problem, where the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be a minority in just a few years—Israelis have forgotten the command of the Lord to multiply and replenish the earth and and have not become that nation whose descendants have been multiplied “as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17).

And like no other time in Israel’s modern history, the Jewish people are facing a reality check—a serious illness that for many years was undetected is now being exposed under the knife of the Great Surgeon.

Sometimes doctors have to amputate a limb or cut out huge sections of a vital organ in order to save a cancer patient. It seems cruel. And it sometimes appears that God is cruel—like the lion that will “tear” and “take away” (Hosea 5:14) But the loving God of Israel does all this, believe it or not, not to destroy, but ultimately to heal and save His beloved patient before it’s too late.

3. God is going to cause His people to seek a cure—and they will find that cure in the new covenant.

And now I come to my last point: Not only is God going to save His people as He promised, and not only will this salvation require that the nation of Israel endure a painful period of uncovering and exposing its true condition, but finally God is going to cause His people to seek a cure—and they will find that cure in the new covenant.

Earlier we read the ominous words of God to His people in Jeremiah 30:12,13: ¹² For thus says the LORD: ‘Your affliction is incurable, your wound is severe. ¹³ There is no one to plead your cause…you have no healing medicines.’

That’s pretty depressing. His people have an incurable disease!

Now this brings me back to where I began—to this teaching called “dual covenant” theology, a teaching that says Israel has its covenant and the Gentiles have their covenant. God treats Israel according to the old covenant in which Israel, through faithful obedience to God’s law, will be saved.

I’m going to show you now that we’re not doing Israel any favor by expecting them to try and live according to the old covenant—because God has promised to save His people Israel, the Jewish people, according to a new covenant.

Let’s read now from our main text in Jeremiah, 31:31,32:

³¹ ‘Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—³² not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.’

So what about dual-covenant theology—that teaching that says that the old covenant provides a way of salvation for the Jews while the new covenant provides salvation for the Gentiles?

If anything, it’s the new covenant that is given first and foremost to the Jewish people themselves. We just read in Jeremiah 31:31 that the Lord will make a new covenant “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” It actually doesn’t even mention Gentiles here. We see elsewhere in the Scriptures that Gentiles only get to enjoy the blessings of the new covenant by miraculously being grafted into the olive tree of Israel.

There’s one only one covenant that makes a way for salvation—not two covenants. We read in the next chapter of Jeremiah, 32:39,40: ³⁹ “‘Then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. ⁴⁰ And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me.‘”

Now let me quickly clarify something. We need to understand which old covenant the new covenant makes obsolete. You see, there was a covenant that God made with Noah, which contains God’s unilateral promise that He will never again cause a great flood to destroy mankind. Then there was another old covenant made with Abraham and his descendants: Isaac; Jacob, or Israel; and the children of Israel. This actually is also a unilateral commitment by God to give them the land of Canaan, and to make them a blessing to the nations. Now that’s called in the Bible a number of times “an everlasting covenant.” That covenant has not become obsolete. That’s an everlasting covenant, which guarantees the Jewish people the land as their inheritance. It was not a covenant that guaranteed that they would always live in their land, but the land is their inheritance.

In Jeremiah 31 and 32, the prophet is referring to a particular former covenant made with Moses and the children of Israel at Sinai—this covenant made at Sinai was ratified by a covenant sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood of that sacrifice (Exodus 24:4-8). This covenant established the fact that the Jewish people were the chosen people of God, and was accompanied by promises for obedience and penalties for disobedience.

Now the problem with that covenant is not that it was a faulty covenant, but that the people were a faulty people trying to live up to that covenant. Hebrews 8:8 puts it this way, “Because finding fault with them, He says: ‘Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’ ”

And Jeremiah recognized that the people of Israel were at fault and this is why there needed to be a new contract drawn up. Again, it is written in Jeremiah 31:31,32: ³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — ³² not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.”

Now if you’re a Gentile, now is not the time to look down on the Jews and say, “What’s the matter with you people—breaking God’s law? Can’t you do better?” I wonder how many times you broke one of God’s commands this past week alone. And by the way, the New Testament contains more commands than the 613 commands identified in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Now how many people do you know in the world who have the ability to keep God’s laws faithfully? I don’t know anyone—Jew or Gentile. And let’s say we could actually find a person who perhaps broke only one single law once in his or her entire life—that would be quite a feat in itself. But what does the Bible say about such a person? According to James 2:10, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”

Now this may seem unfair on the surface—that just one violation of a contract or covenant makes the entire document null and void. But in the justice system of today it’s the same. If you sign a contract with me but you violate even one minor point, I would have every right to nullify my contractual obligations.

So if a person is guilty of transgressing the whole law by sinning just one teeny measly time, then who can be saved? Jesus’ disciples once asked that question. Let’s read Matthew 19:25,26:

²⁵ “When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’ ²⁶ But Jesus looked at them and said to them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”

Who can be saved if perfect obedience to God’s contract is required?

And that’s why the first covenant is inadequate for salvation today—for Gentiles and for Jews. And that’s why God had to make a new covenant, because the old covenant was only effective in the way it revealed and exposed the sickness and the absolute inability of mankind to live according to God’s requirements. The old covenant didn’t provide the cure.

Yes, under the old covenant there was a way of receiving forgiveness. God set up a system of sacrifices where something with great value was given up as a payment of a fine for breaking the law. The most valuable sacrifices were blood sacrifices, and they were the most effective of all. But all of these sacrifices were simply shadows of an infinitely more valuable blood sacrifice—the blood that would be shed one day not by a precious animal, but by the precious Son of God Himself.

This sacrificial blood of the Son of God would be so precious and of such value that it could pay the penalty of every sin you have ever committed—and not just your penalty, but mine as well. In fact, the shed blood of the Son of God on that cross was so valuable that it could pay the penalty and wash away the sin of the people of the entire world.

From the very foundation of the world God had determined that one day He would make a new covenant, which would not only exist to reveal our sinful condition, but would also contain within it the miracle cure for the incurable—even the incurable sinner. As we read earlier, it says in Matthew 26:27,28:

²⁷ “Then [Yeshua] took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. ²⁸ For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’ ”

In the old covenant it says in Exodus 24:8, “And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.’ ”

In the new covenant the priest also sprinkles us to make us clean. We read in Hebrews 9:11-14:

¹¹ “But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. ¹² Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. ¹³ For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, ¹⁴ how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

What a terrible thing it is to expect the Jewish people to try and keep living under the old covenant, when the new covenant is so much more effective in cleansing even our consciences—something the blood of mere animals could never do. It is especially cruel for a Christian to tell a Jewish person, “Just try your hardest to keep the law of Moses,” when today there is not even a temple or a system of sacrifice that at one time at least made provision for forgiveness. In fact, when Yeshua made that final sacrifice, the veil of the temple was rent in two, signaling that there was no more need for the temple and sacrifices.

So let’s rejoice that we have a better covenant whereby the most precious blood of Yeshua has been shed once and for all for the sins of the whole world—Jew and Gentile alike—and that if we sin and confess our sins, that same blood that was shed will cover us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

So in conclusion, let me give you some action steps you can take in regard to the matter of the salvation of Israel.

Here’s what we should do while the nation of Israel is being treated by the Great Physician through a very painful process of examination and exposure.

Maybe it would be helpful if we think of ourselves as nurses at the patient’s side. An important task of every nurse is to try and make the patient as comfortable as possible while they’re getting treatment. The nurse’s job is not to inflict more pain—that’s the surgeon’s job.

1. Comfort the patient.

During Israel’s painful ordeal, we should, like a good nurse, do our best to comfort the patient. This is not the time to remind the patient over and over again how bad their condition is. That’s primarily the Physician’s job. In Isaiah 40:1,2 we read:

¹ ‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people!’ says your God. ² ‘Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.’

So it’s time to comfort God’s people. We don’t comfort them by saying that they don’t have a sin problem, or that if they just try a little harder, they’ll be able to save themselves. But we do comfort them by saying: “If you’ll just put your whole faith in the Physician, if you’ll submit your whole life and destiny into His hands, you’re going be healed and you’re going to be saved from this incurable condition. He’s the Greatest Physician there is; He’s cured millions of patients with a problem just like yours.” We comfort Israel by saying, “If you ‘ll let the Physician apply His purifying blood to your body, your cancer will be eradicated.”

2. Introduce the patient to the Physician.

But there’s a second thing we need to do in relation to Israel’s salvation through the new covenant. We need to tell them about the cure. It’s one thing to tell the people of Israel that they have a good doctor. But they need to meet this doctor. We need to introduce them to the Great Physician.

Our job is to tell the patient that the doctor with the cure is Yeshua. And we need to tell them that the amazing thing about this doctor is that He’s not just the doctor who knows the cure; He’s the cure Himself. In the words of Isaiah 53:4-6:

⁴ “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. ⁵ But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. ⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

We need to bring this good news to the Jewish people. Paul speaks specifically concerning the matter of Israel’s salvation in Romans 10:12-15:

¹² “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. ¹³ For ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’

¹⁴ “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? ¹⁵ And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!’ ”

Speaking of good tidings, Isaiah 52:7-9 declares:

⁷ “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ ⁸ Your watchmen shall lift up their voices, with their voices they shall sing together; for they shall see eye to eye when the LORD brings back Zion. ⁹ Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem! For the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.”

3. Pray for the patient.

But there’s a third and last thing we can do as we stand alongside the patient during this painful period in God’s dealings with Israel. We ought to be interceding for Israel. We’ve got a lot of nurses here. I hope you nurses pray over each and every one of your patients. God has called us to pray for Israel and to pray for Israel’s healing and salvation.

Psalm 122:6-8 says: ⁶ “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you. ⁷ Peace be within your walls, prosperity within your palaces.’ ⁸ For the sake of my brethren and companions, I will now say, ‘Peace be within you.’ ”

And our prayers ought to be infused with fervency. Remember, it was Yeshua who wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). And Paul expressed his heartfelt plea in Romans 10:1, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.”

Finally, we can pray with the assurance of the Word of God that what we are praying for will certainly come to pass. Paul wrote in Romans 11:26,27:

²⁶ “And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; ²⁷ for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.’ ”