Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 543
“And it shall come to pass, that as you were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so will Isave you and you shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong.” Zechariah 8:13.
AS these words came from the lips of Zechariah, doubtless they referred to the seed of Abraham, including the two tribes of Judah and the ten tribes of Israel. They have already received a minor fulfillment. But their most glorious accomplishment is yet to come. The Jews have for many a generation been cursed by all people. For ages no one had a good word or a kind look for the Jew. In every nation they have been persecuted and hunted like beasts of prey. The followers of the fierce Mohammed have not been their only enemies, for the children of the Babylonian harlot have equally thirsted for their blood in our own country.
In the dark ages, it was accounted God’s service to afflict the Israelites, and the day upon which the Church celebrated our Savior’s passion was chosen for the public stoning of His own Brothers and Sisters if they ventured into the streets. To be a Jew was, in the estimation of that era, to be deserving of all scorn and cruelty, and of no pity or consideration. To what exactions, to what fines, to what imprisonments and tortures have not the sons of Jacob been subjected by the professed followers of the Messiah? It is perhaps the greatest of all modern miracles that there should be one Jew upon earth who is a Christian—for the treatment they have received from pretended Christians has been enough to make them hate the name of Jesus.
It has been not simply villainous, but diabolical. Devils in Hell could not be more cruel to their victims than professed Christians have been to the sons of Abraham. They have been a curse, indeed. The whole vocabulary of abuse from “dog,” down to “devil,” has been exhausted upon them. Among all nations they have been a hissing and a byword. But the day is coming, yes, it dawns already, when the whole world shall discern the true dignity of the chosen seed. And they shall seek their company because the Lord has blessed them. In that day when Israel shall look upon Him whom they have pierced and shall mourn for their sins, the Jew shall take his true rank among the nations as an elder brother and a prince.
The covenant made with Abraham, to bless all nations by his seed, is not revoked. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the chosen nation shall not be blotted out from the book of remembrance. The Lord has not cast away His people. He has never given their mother a bill of divorce. He has never put them away. In a little wrath He has hidden His face from them, but with great mercies will He gather them. The natural branches shall again be engrafted into the olive together with the wild olive grafts from among the Gentiles. In the Jew, first and chiefly, shall Divine Grace triumph through the King of the Jews. O Time, fly with rapid wing and bring the auspicious day!
Another meaning has been given to the passage by some very eminent expositors, namely, that the Jews have been for ages the model of a curse to all people. As old Master Trapp says, they bear upon their backs the wheels of God’s rod, or, as he puts it yet more strongly, like Cain, they carry upon their foreheads the mark of God’s wrath. They have been a people scattered and peeled, not numbered among the nations, men of weary foot and haggard countenances. Their nation has been the football of Providence, and the butt of misfortune. They have been shipwrecked upon every sea, overturned by every storm—the victims of every calamity and the objects of every misery.
Everywhere have they been men evidently accursed of God and given up to His wrath. When men wanted a name to curse by, they said, “Let me be as accursed as the Jew.” But the day is to come when they are to be quite as manifestly the blessed ones of God. Their conversion shall show how God favors them. Their gathering to their own land, the splendor of the reign of Messiah in their midst. All those latter-day glories which are dimly shadowed in the Book of the Revela- tion, and in the Book of the Vision of Daniel the Prophet—when all these shall come to pass—then the sons of men shall speak of the Jewish people as a royal priesthood and a peculiar people.
The seed of Abraham, God’s Friend, are very dear to Him—the darlings of His bosom, the flock of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Oh, that the dark night would soon be over! Long has the Christian Church slept in forgetfulness of the Jew. Even faithful men have scarcely given a thought to Israel, and have left the Jew to perish as though his heart were too hard to be melted by Divine love. I trust that mistake has been discovered and that there are many now anxiously praying for the restoration of the glory unto Israel.
But too many are still indifferent where earnestness is needed. May the Lord in His infinite mercy first put it into His people’s hearts to pray for Israel, and then to work in love and labor in faith. May He hasten in His own time the fulfillment of His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then shall the whole earth be covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.