by
Brian Williams
(a sermon given in 1967)
We have seen already that the ten tribes of Israel were
carried captive into Assyria, and 130 years later the two tribes
of Judah, having also forsaken their God, were carried captive
into Babylon.
But after seventy years, under Cyrus king of Persia, the
Jews were permitted to leave Babylon and come all the way back to
Palestine, and their descendants were there in Jesus' day.
How did they come back? They did not have to fight their way
back! They were given permission to return to Jerusalem to
rebuild the city and to rebuild the temple, exactly fulfilling
what God had said through His prophet Hosea "Who is he that
saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?"
How can you know a tree prophet?
When he says a thing is going to happen and it comes to
pass, just like he said! "But I will have mercy upon the house of
Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not
save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by
horsemen." How marvellously that was fulfilled! Read the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah, and you will find that 42,360 Jews took the
opportunity to return, together with some seven thousand other
people, making just about fifty thousand people that undertook
the long trek from Babylon to Jerusalem, and to rebuild the city
and to rebuild the house of God. And the descendent, of this
mixed multitude were there in Jesus' day, the only surviving
recognisable remnant of God's people, because the ten tribes had
gone into Assyria and were apparently lost. Nobody would now
recognize them as being God's people. And of all the Jews that
had gone into Babylon, only fifty thousand returned and the
others were dispersed. It was the descendants of that remnant of
the Jews that returned to Palestine that was there in Jesus' day.
Now the Bible says, "Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she
conceived, and bare a son. Then said God, Call his name Loammi:
for ye am not my people, and I will not be your God." The
name 'Ammi' means 'My people,' the word 'Lo' means 'Not,' so
when He said, Call your little boy Lo-ammi, it means 'Not my
people' or 'No people'. So Hosea has three children by his
unfaithful wife. The first one is called 'I will have my
revenge,' the second is called 'No mercy,' and the third is
called 'No people,' revealing picturesquely the forthcoming fate
of the ten tribes of Israel.
(5) SURE PROOF OF ISRAEL'S IDENTITY.
Now here is one of the key verses in all the Bible, Hosea
chapter one, verse ten. If you cannot understand this verse then
I guarantee that you cannot understand the Bible! "Yet the number
of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which
cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that
in the place where it was said unto them, Ye am not my people,
there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living
God."
Remember what we have seen in 2 Kings 17. Israel gone into
captivity in Assyria never to return, the Jews gone into
captivity in Babylon and permitted to return after seventy years.
Gad says to Israel, I will have my revenge. You who are no longer
obtaining mercy, you who are no longer am people, I am no longer
your God. Yet in spite of all that, "the number of the children
of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be
measured nor numbered." God says He will make this Israel people
so great in number, who shall be able to number the fourth part
of them? They are the thousands of Manasseh and the ten thousands
of Ephraim!
God says that in spite of the fact of His not having mercy
on Israel, of finishing with them, and sending them into
captivity never to return, He will make them as the sand of the
sea for number, "and it shall come to pass, that in the place
where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall
be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God."
What does that mean, sons of the living God? The Bible says,
"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many
as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on His name." It means Christians. The
Bible says, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us, that we should be called the sons of God therefore the
world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are
we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be:
but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for
we shall see Him as He is."
Hath God cast away His people which He foreknew? Paul says,
with all the power at his command, "God forbid." How could God
cast off the people to whom He had made such glorious and exceed-
ing great and precious promises, that they should be a people
after His own heart? How could God do away with this people and
so nullify the promise made to Abraham when He said, "In blessing
I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as
the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea
shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in
thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because
thou hast obeyed my voice", and, when He promised "In Isaac shall
thy seed be called"; when He said, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated"; and when He said, "I am God Almighty: be fruitful
and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee,
and kings shall came out of thy loins," all of which promises
were to be fulfilled "in the last days"
Praise the Lord! Everywhere in the Bible we find that the
last days are shown to be this Christian dispensation. Look at
Hebrews, chapter one, and the first two verses: "God, who at
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us
by His Son." So the last days are the days of the Christian
dispensation when the good news of the gospel is sounding forth
throughout the ends of the earth, and God said that in the last
days, Joseph's descendants would be "a nation and a company of
nations". From his elder son Manasseh would come a great people,
and from his younger son Ephraim would come a multitude, or
fullness, of nations that would be as the dust of the earth,
spreading abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north,
and to the south, inhabiting the waste places of the earth; a
people blessed with blessings of heaven above and the earth
beneath and the deep that lieth under; a people blessed above all
the nations of the world; a people that would take the gospel
throughout the ends of the earth, because they would be the sons
of the living God.
What happened? O glory to God! God did not break one of His
promises. Oh how I wish could proclaim this to Billy Graham's
congregation at Earl's Court Arena tonight! I wish I could shout
it from every rooftop and proclaim it from every pulpit: "Blessed
be the Lord God of Israel; for He bath visited and redeemed His
people." How did He do it? We have read it so many times this
week: let us look again at Isaiah, chapter 53. God sent His
prophet to speak to Israel, and he said, "Who hath believed our
report?"; and who will believe the message that we bring? It is
almost too fantastic for words! "Who bath believed our report,
and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For He shall grow up
before Him as a tender plant, and as a mot out of a dry ground:
He bath no form or comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there
is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and
rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and
we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we
esteemed Him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried
our Sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was
upon Him; and with His stripes we am healed. All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and
the Lord bath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was
oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His month: He
is brought as a Iamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His month. He was taken from
prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation?
for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the
transgression of my people was He stricken. And He made His grave
with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because He had
done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it
pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He bath put Him to grief: when
Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His
seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail out His
soul, he shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall my righteous
Servant justify many; for He shall hear their iniquities
Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He
shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He bath poured
out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the
transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession
for the transgressors."
What happened? Israel was carried away captive. God said I
will have my revenge, you will no longer be my people and I will
not be your God, and I will utterly take you away. But in spite
of that, that the promises made to Abraham and the fathers might
stand, and that all the World might wonder at the grace, the
love, the compassion, the mercy, the incomparable Wisdom of
Almighty God, God says He will make His Israel people so great in
number that it is impossible to count them, and in the place
where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, it will he
said of them, You are Christians, sons of the living God. In the
last days of this Christian dispensation, the ten tribes of
Israel are to have became a Christian nation.
How could it come about? By redemption. To redeem means to
buy back something that belonged to you in the first place. The
Bible says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath
visited and redeemed His people." "Thou shalt call His name
JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins." O glory to
God!
"Paschal Lamb, by God appointed, All our sins on Thee were
laid; By almighty love anointed, Thou hast full atonement
made: All Thy people are forgiven Through the virtue of Thy
blood; Opened is the gate of heaven;
Peace is made 'twixt men and God."
May we close with Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 31, to round
off what we have said:
"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in
the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the Lard: But this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days,
saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall
be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for
they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest
of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I
will remember their sin no more. Thus saith the Lord, which
giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon
and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea
when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is His name: If
those Ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the
seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me far
ever. Thus saith the Lord, If heaven above can be measured, and
the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also
cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done,
saith the Lard."
O that we might understand the matchless grace of God! How
would the new covenant be established with the house of Israel?
How could God have mercy upon this people whom He had cast
off for breaking the very commandments, the keeping of which
would make them to be the greatest people in the world? Read
Matthew 26, verse 26: "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread,
and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and
said, Take, eat; this is my body. And He took the cup, and gave
thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this
is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the
remission of sins."
The Lord said, "I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel", and Jesus, the night He was betrayed, said, "This cup is
the new testament - the new covenant - in my blood." Hallelujah!
His Israel people, cast away, never returning to Palestine,
is in the last days, in the economy of God, to be frond a people
that as a nation has begun to come under the new covenant, that
has embraced - at least nominally - the glorious Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and is known throughout all the ends of the
earth as a Christian nation and commonwealth of nations.
The apostle Paul sums it all up in Romans, chapter 11,
reading from verse 29: "For the gifts and calling of God are
without repentance." God called Israel in the first place, and
"God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew." "For as ye
in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained merry,
through their unbelief: even so have these also now not believed,
that through your mercy they also may obtain merry. For God hath
concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon
all."
God purposed for His Israel people to be lost, to become an
obscure people, that in the fullness of time they might receive
the Gospel of His dear Son the Lord Jesus Christ, in ignorance of
their true identity, that through them the nations of the world
might also come under the blessings of this new covenant.
And so Paul throws his arms up in the air, words almost
failing him at this point to express the great and marvellous
thing that God has done, and he says: "O the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His
judgments, and His ways passed finding out! For who bath known
the mind of the Lord? Or who hash been His counsellor? Or who
hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him
again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things:
to whom be glory for ever. Amen."
You know what happened to the Lost Tribes, and you know who
they are.
"Ye seed of Israel's chosen race, Ye ransomed from The fall,
Hail Him who saves you by His grace, And crown Him Lord of
all"
...............
END OF BRIAN WILLIAM'S SERMON present in 1967 in England.
The words of that great hymn and much more I grew up singing all
through my upbringing and schooling in England, under the Church
of England system.
As we have shown in various studies on this Website, Britain
received the Gospel not many years after Jesus had ascended back
to heaven. The first nation in the world to proclaim Christianity
as a "national religion" was the British nation. When the Roman
Catholic church came to Britain about 600 AD it found a
Christianity there that was in MANY ways different than Rome, so
much so that her practicing nation of Christians were termed
"heretics" by the representative of Catholicism to the Pope of
Rome.
The weekly 7th day Sabbath was observed in Britain, and was not
stamped out by Roman Catholicism until about 1100 AD.
For many centuries Britain held to a faith that was closer to
apostolic than that of Rome. God had increased Israel once more
as the stars of heaven and sand upon the sea shore. For a while,
Israel walk in the light of the apostles of Jesus, but over time
she has departed from that light, yet Israel as nations, have
been responsible for giving the Gospel and words of the Bible to
the whole world.
Israel will again be punished for her departure from the truth of
her Lord God, in the last years of this age, but she will repent
then, and once more she will be shown mercy, restored, and
finally walk for all times in God's light and ways. She will be
used (together with the resurrected saints of God) again to bring
the light of truth to the world during the first decades of
Jesus' return and 1,000 year reign on earth. God speed that
glorious day - Keith Hunt
|
