God's Multi-Ethnic Family Plan, Pt 5 - The Future of Israel and All Nations

The connection between God’s future for the nation Israel and other nations of the earth is not well known today, but should be. Some in focus on Israel’s future miss God’s plan for other nations in the future. Others teach ethnic or national Israel has no future. Some teach the church is Israel without replacing/ruling out a future mass salvation of ethnic or national Israel (ex: R.C. Sproul, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Charles Hodge, Jonathan Edwards, Puritans such as Thomas Boston, William Perkins, the Westminster Larger Catechism, Question #191, Geneva Bible on Rom 11).

One thing the early Reformed English-speaking/Puritan tradition virtually all agreed on was that God had a future plan for Israel which related to His future plans for other nations, too (“the fullness of the Gentiles” in Rom 11. in connection with the “all Israel” God would save then). This perspective has been lost by many in that tradition today, but they believed it was essential to healthy churches among Gentiles that we share the prayers, passion and perspective that Paul had in Romans 9-11 for his own people the Jews, and for all the peoples of the earth to be blessed, “all Israel … the fullness of Gentiles.” Many in history have seen God’s future for the nation Israel from His promises to Abraham, reaffirmed in Rom. 11, but I want us tonight to look again at the lesser known promise before Abraham, the promise/prophecy of Gen. 9, and how it relates to other nations, and the fullness of God’s plans for other nations.