Grace Comes To The Jews

God made sure Jesus would be rejected,
When He calloused Jews’ spiritual insight;
Moses’ Law was so broken and neglected,
That by Isaiah He dimmed Messiah’s light!
If Christ had not died, men were fore’er lost,
And Israel the gospel would likely hog;
Atonement would not have come by the cross;
From the world Israel might have kept God!
Grace for the Jews was more slowly dispensed;
For them, the good news is a mystery;
That Jesus is God, they can’t be convinced;
That Messiah has come, they won’t agree!
Election saved some Jews ere Christ was born;
Grace comes after Gabriel sounds his horn!

Isaiah told Israel 700 years before Jesus came that God had placed a judgment of dulled spiritual insight on them for their sin.

“He [God] said [to Isaiah], ‘Go and tell this people [Israel]: Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused, make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.’ “ (Isaiah 6:9-10) [Brackets added]

This stern judgment insured that Israel would not understand the messages sent to them by God through the prophets. When the Messiah (Jesus) was born, He spoke to them in parables, so that they would not understand the good news of salvation. Had they possessed spiritual insight, they would have obeyed the prophets and accepted Jesus as their King and High Priest; if they had, God’s plan of atonement through the sacrifice of His Son would not have happened. Imagine what a mess that would have engendered! The judgment shocked Isaiah so much, he asked in the next verse, “For how long?” God’s answer was after the land of Israel had been laid waste two times; obviously He meant after the Babylonian conquest in 586 B. C. and the Roman destruction in 70 A.D., thus He meant the judgment would be lifted after the Second Coming of Christ, which has not yet happened. So the Jews still have dulled insight today.

“ ’And I [God] will pour out on the house of David [the remnant of Israel that lives when Christ returns] and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one that they pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.’ “ (Zechariah 12:10-11) [Brackets added]

The judgment of callousness on the Jews is the cause of their rejection of the prophets and Jesus as Messiah, and it continues to this day. There were some Jews saved, however, by special election of God who counted their obedience as faith, during the time from Abel to Jesus; since the coming of Messiah (Jesus), some Jews are being saved by grace through their faith in Jesus as Lord (See Hebrews Chapter 11), exactly as Gentiles are saved by grace. According to Zechariah (above), Christ will remove the dullness of Jews and pour out grace upon them when He returns, and the majority of the remnant still living will convert to Christianity.

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)