Israel, and Israel's Hope.
"Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." Isaiah xxvii, 6. We are now prepared to consider— II. The promise comprised in the text. We remark first, negatively, that the promise contained in the text does not imply a restoration of the nation of the Jews, or the granting of them any peculiar national blessings, or distinctions above other nations, either political or ecclesiastical, in this world or in an age to come. But we do declare, affirmatively, that it implies the final triumph and glory of the whole redeemed church of God, constituted of Jew and Gentile, in their resurrection beauty and blessedness, when "God shall send his Son, Jesus Christ, in the times of restitution." It implies the fulfillment of the promises God has made to the fathers as commented upon by Saint Paul. "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not to seeds as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, That the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect; for if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise." The inheritance and the promised covenant mercies in Christ, therefore, were not fulfilled and enjoyed under the dispensation of the law, when the children of Israel entered into the land of Canaan, and possessed it but a little while. That was not that "rest that remaineth for the people of God," nor is it to be in this present world. It is a promise in reversion to be fulfilled in the future world of glory, to all the heirs of promise, Jews and Gentiles, who constitute the true Israel of God. To "Abraham and his seed, which is Christ"—and all those who are "Christ's"—of whom the apostle affirms "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal. iii, 16–29. The inheritance of the true and saved Israel of God, is to be the renewed earth; "for the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not to Abraham, or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." And when we consider that this earth, on its regenesis, is to become the future abode of God's people, how appropriate and beautiful the text, "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit!" And there is a propriety in the language of the apostle, before unobserved, concerning Abraham and his true seed of faith among his own lineal descendants who have died. "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off; and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." "The covenant" which God "made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac, and confirmed unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance," has reference to the future and glorified world. This is evident from the vision Jacob had of it, and the promise made and confirmed to him. Having quitted his father's tent to avoid the murderous anger of Esau, his brother, he pursued his solitary way from Beersheba to Padan-aram to his mother's father; his only possession was his staff in hand; and he was now an exile from the land he had desired to obtain. His first day's journey of about forty miles had come to a close, and the setting sun found him solitary and alone far from home and kindred, city or tent. He collected a few stones upon which to recline his head while he rested his weary body upon the lap of earth to sleep. In his night visions "He dreamed and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, 'I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land wherein thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.'" This vision, with this promise of the land, and God's declaration that he was the Lord God of his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, has a significance and a meaning it is well to study. As "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," these patriarchs must rise again from the dead. The shekinah, the symbol of the manifested God, the future Messiah, revealed and standing above, from whom proceeds the voice, renewing to Jacob the great promise made to Abraham and to Isaac, shows forth the day of the Messiah's revelation in glory when he will come to raise the dead, call forth the sleepers from the dust of the earth where they lie, as he did Jacob reposing in sleep, and give them the land in which their bones rest in hope of "a better resurrection." The angelic beings descending, and scaling the mysterious ladder reaching from earth to heaven, shadow the period when "the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." The promise made by the Lord God of the patriarchs to Jacob in the glory of that vision, "the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed," is but the renewal of that covenant promise first made to Abraham, and in oath confirmed to Isaac, that "the world" should be their "everlasting inheritance." As Jacob, who was first called Israel under the old covenant, had such a vision of glory to be realized in the future and glorified earth, Nathanael, the first called by the same angel of the covenant, now the Messiah revealed, has the assurance that he should be one day witness to the glories pictured to his father, Jacob. "Thou shalt see greater things than these." "Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." John i, 51. The promise of the inheritance of "the land"—"the world"—to Abraham and his seed as an "everlasting inheritance," involves their resurrection to immortality. Therefore it is written, "I have made thee a father of many nations before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were." This explains the otherwise inexplicable mystery how it was that "by faith" the patriarchs "sejourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country," inheriting "not so much as to set their foot on" during their long lifetime; and yet God "gave it to them for an everlasting possession." The hope of Israel must be in the resurrection from the dead to inherit the earth, or the promise of God utterly fails of an accomplishment. And accordingly so the Scriptures express. In Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones (which some expositors of the Christian Church have marvelously misinterpreted by some law of exegesis unknown to themselves or to the Church) Israel is represented as saying, "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts." But Jehovah gives the promise, "Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and will put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and shall place you in your own land." Ezekiel xxxvii.58Here is the vision explained and interpreted, by God himself, as to what constitutes the hope of Israel, and when and how it is to be consummated. The only hope of Israel, yet future, is in a redemption from their graves; and the only restoration to their land of promise is by a resurrection from the dead when quickened by the Spirit. And that this is the hope of Israel, is most emphatically affirmed by the apostle Paul on every occasion he preached the gospel to his own race, or explained it to the Gentiles. In the presence of King Agrippa he declares, "And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: unto which promise our twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" Acts xxvi, 6–8. Before his brethren in Rome, where he had appealed to Cæsar for the integrity of his life and conversation, he affirms, "For the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain." And what that hope was, there is no mistaking when he says, "Touching the resurrection of the dead I am called in question." In the context, the prophet sings the hope of Israel, "Thy dead shall live; my dead body shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for the dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." Isa. xxvi, 19. "The Lord of hosts will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall be taken away from off all the earth; for the Lord hath spoken it." In that day, as— *Reviving plants and flowers,
Anew deck the plain.* *The woods hear the voice of Spring,
And flourish green again,* so will earth revive in a new genesis, and the dead and now inanimate dust of the sleeping myriads of saints awake, and be quickened into a new life, by the voice of Him who is "made a quickening spirit." Oh, may the Lord of life and glory give you and me a part in the resurrection of the just! *Shall I be left abandoned in the dust,
When fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust,
Deny him, doomed to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive
With disappointment, penury and pain?
No! Heaven's immortal spring shall yet arrive,
And man's majestic beauty bloom again,
Bright through the eternal year of love's triumphant reign.*
Beattie. That the restoration from the dead constituted the hope of the patriarchs as given in the promises of God to them, is set forth most beautifully and distinctly by Mr. Bonar, when writing near the cave of Machpelah where these holy men rest; and his language aptly explains that remarkable scripture uttered by Christ to the Sadducees—the deniers of this hope. "The great point on which Abraham's testimony bore, was the resurrection. Heb. xi, 8–16. And the terminating point of the divine testimony to the relationship existing between the patriarchs and the God who had entered into covenant with them, was the same. 'As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.' And it was the same testimony that was embodied in the anxiety shown by these patriarchs, 'concerning their bones.'" "One feels that it is round the tomb of Abraham, the place where his dust lies waiting for the resurrection, that a special, a not unreasonable interest gathers. Could we get access to the cave itself, we might find the bodies of these patriarchs still there, or at least that of Jacob; for we read, 'The physicians embalmed Israel,' so that his mummy may be entire. We have mummies in the British Museum at least as old as Abraham. And if Jacob's grave has not been rifled, his body will be found as it was when laid there by his sons. Yet it matters not in what form the bodies of those holy men may be found; the glory in reversion for them at the resurrection of the just does not depend on the contents of their tomb. They were careful about their bones only that they might leave a testimony to their hope. They saw Him 'afar off, who is the resurrection and the life.' Gladly would they have seen him in their own day; but they were willing to wait for his; content to take life through death, resurrection through the grave, the incorruptible through corruption." This is a beautiful and sublime description as well as faithful interpretation of the Scriptural hope of these patriarchs. Pollok's description of the resurrection, at the last day, will hardly, however, be realized by families on the morning when light and life shall break upon the sepulchres of the sleeping dead in Christ; for all have not died in Christ— *The family tomb, to whose devouring mouth
Descended sire and son, age after age,
In long unbroken, hereditary line,
Poured forth, at once, the ancient father rude,
And all his offspring of a thousand years.* Oh, how happy the greetings of death-divided friends and kindred, who have for a season been severed by the cruel and relentless hand of Death! But how sad to awake, and find some missing member of our household who has no part in "the first resurrection," or "the resurrection of the just," in that day. But the whole family of the faithful and redeemed will be remembered without a single missing one. Even "the least in the kingdom of heaven," and without a missing lamb of the fold, all will be gathered to meet on the blissful fields of the new-robed earth, in its more than pristine Eden dress; and there to part no more. *Soon and forever!
Such promise our trust,
Though ashes to ashes,
And dust unto dust.
Soon and forever,
Our union shall be
Made perfect, our glorious
Redeemer, in thee.
When the sins and the sorrows
Of time shall be o'er,
Its pangs and its partings
Remembered no more,
When life cannot fail,
And when death cannot sever,
Israel with Christ shall be,
Soon and forever.*
Monsel. The majestic and wide-spread "olive tree," with its natural branches and noble cion, will be transplanted into the new and beautiful world to come, and fill that world with its immortal fruit. Jehovah will there be "as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon; his branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. The blossoms thereof as Lebanon." Such is the descriptive figure and symbol of Israel saved by the Lord and transplanted over into the promised land, "the mountains of Israel." "Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? Prudent, and he shall know them? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them." The most important consideration in relation to this subject individually, is, to know whether we personally are the children of God by faith, and are "fellow-heirs to all these bright hopes of a future immortality in the kingdom of God." Are you and I Israelites, indeed, in whom there is no guile? Are we "princes of God," having prevailed in "fervent effectual prayer" with God? Have we "received the spirit of adoption," and become "the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty?" Are we believing Gentiles, ingrafted into the "good olive tree," and become "partakers of its root and fatness?" If so, how blessed and all-glorious our future prospects! We may ascend the mount of prayer, as did Moses Nebo and Pisgah's summit heights, and by faith view the promised land, which is our everlasting home. Oh, hail, happy land! *The land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign.* When shall we pass over Jordan's swelling floods, into full possession of the heavenly country, where all Israel shall dwell safely in everlasting peace? The land seen by the fathers "afar off" is now near and "ready to be revealed in this the last time." The city of our God, "the heavenly Jerusalem," is soon to "come down from God out of heaven," and adorn the new-made world with its garnished and resplendent foundations of all manner of precious stones, its noble walls of jasper, its massive gates of pearl, its mirror-like streets of gold, its glorious and divinely-illuminated palaces and mansions for the blest—"a city whose builder and maker is God;" for which the patriarchs and Israel looked, and which God has prepared for them that love him. Another view of this subject presents a sad consideration, and many serious and unhappy reflections. When it is thus "well with the righteous," oh, "where shall the sinner and ungodly appear?" They have no part in the "resurrection of the just," in the inheritance of the saints. They must be thrust out of the kingdom, shut out of the paradise of God, chased out of the world, and be destroyed forever from the face of the earth. Says Jesus, "In the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Then it will be that "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." *Where a blasted world shall brighten
Underneath a purer sphere,
And a softer, gentler sunshine
Shed its healing splendors here;
Where earth's barren vales shall blossom,
Putting on their robe of green,
And a purer, fairer Eden
Be where only wastes have been;
Where a King in kingly glory,
Such as earth has never known,
Shall assume the righteous sceptre,
Claim and wear the holy crown;—
Brothers, we shall meet and rest
'Mid the holy and blest.'*