The reason God set aside the Nation of Israel was to fulfill the promises of Genesis 3:15, that the Seed of the woman would come to be the Redeemer of mankind.
In order to bring that to a fulfillment, He sovereignly chose one man, Abraham, to create a people for Himself, the Jewish people, and promised Abraham that through him would come a great nation and through this nation would come the Messiah.
So God begins to prepare the Nation of Israel for the role of being the missionaries to the nations. Exodus 19:6 says, “And ye shall be unto me a Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation.” He put them under Law (not the Gentiles), to prepare them for that tremendous role that every Jew would carry out.
But when the opportunity came and they could have had their King and the Kingdom, and they could have brought all the nations of the world to a knowledge of their God (Zechariah 8:23), they dropped the ball. In their unbelief, they rejected their promised King and the Kingdom (Luke 19:14).
The crescendo of this rejection and unbelief was the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7 & 8.
Resulting in God turning from the nation of Israel and calling out another apostle, the apostle Paul. God commissioned Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles with the gospel of grace (Acts 9:15; Romans 11:25; Ephesians 3:1-11). Which is salvation to both Jew and Gentile based solely on God’s grace appropriated by faith alone in the finished work of the cross APART FROM THE MOSAIC LAW AND TEMPLE WORSHIP (Romans 3:21).
Ultimately, the temple was destroyed and the Jews were dispersed into every nation under the sun.
God’s Eternal Purpose
So God, through His unsearchable wisdom and knowledge; sovereignly commits ALL ISRAEL (the Jewish people) to disobedience (Romans 11:32) so that He might have mercy and ALL MANKIND.
And at the very same time promises (at some future time) to return to His chosen people, when He decides the last Gentile has come into the body of Christ (Acts 15:16; Romans 11:25). To fulfill the promises He made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David (Romans 15:8).
God’s plan of salvation is mindboggling.
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