The Almighty swore to Abraham and his seed unconditionally; has He kept His promises, or has He broken them, by taking them from Israel and giving them to the Gentiles?
All the promises of God, how many soever they be, are yea and amen in Christ; (2 Corinthians 1:20) they cannot be broken. But here is a thing that many of our friends forget, and that is, that all God's promises are in Christ, and that the rejection of Christ cuts one off from the promises. "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He said not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of One, and to your Seed, which is Christ." (Galatians 3:16)
Therefore, "If you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. ... Know you therefore that they which be of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, In you shall all nations be blessed." (Galatians 3:29,7-8)
In the face of this, and with the record before us, that the promise of God to Abraham was, "In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," (Genesis 22:18) and even more emphatically, "In you shall all families of the earth be blessed," (Genesis 12:3) it is strange beyond all comprehension, that anybody should think that God's promise to Abraham is broken by being bestowed on the Gentiles. The only way it can be fulfilled is by the gathering of the Gentiles; for it is written that: "Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so shall all Israel be saved; as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." (Romans 11:25-26)
Abraham was himself a Gentile, born and reared in heathenism. (Joshua 24:2) Thus we see that the gathering of the Gentiles in fulfillment of the promise is no new departure, but the consistent carrying out of God's original purpose.
This appears throughout the whole history of Israel. Did God break His word to Abraham when the harlot Rahab, a Canaanitish woman, was counted among His people? Was He unmindful of it in accepting Ruth the Moabitess as an ancestor of the Messiah? The fact that both these women, taken from among the heathen, were ancestors of Christ, shows that God's promises and purposes and plans, have from the beginning embraced all people.
So James had a clear and accurate perception of the truth when he said: "Simeon has declared how God at the beginning did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, says the Lord, who does these things. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world." (Acts 15:14-18)
Instead of God's promise to Israel being broken by the coming in of the Gentiles, it is only by the preaching of the Gospel to them that the house of David is built up.
Take another case. Jesus went up into the region of Tyre and Sidon, seemingly for the express purpose of healing the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman; for He went back as soon as He had performed that deed. "The woman was a Greek," (Mark 7:26) or a Gentile, as the margin has it. When she preferred her request, He seemed to be indifferent, and unwilling to grant it, but it was only to try her faith. He said, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," (Matthew 15:24) and then He responded to the woman's faith, and healed her daughter. Thus He showed that this Gentile woman was one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to whom He was sent.
To limit the promises of God to any one of the nations of this earth, is to limit the Gospel of the grace of God. Christ was made a curse for us, in hanging on the cross, "That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." (Galatians 3:13)
In the Gospel there is no distinction of nationality, for in Christ Jesus those who "were far off are made nigh by His blood;" (Ephesians 2:13) and thus the Gentiles who "were without Christ ... and without God in the world, ... being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, ... are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." (Ephesians 2:12,19)
Let us not waste time in seeking to circumscribe and narrow the promises of God, thus narrowing our own minds, but allow our hearts to be enlarged by the contemplation of His boundless promises, so as to be able to "comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, [and]be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:18-19)--Present Truth, July 31, 1902.