Episode 23 - What Does God Replace? Let’s Address Replacement Theology

 

You can watch the live stream of this study tonight between 8pm to 9pm AEST here.

Replacement theology. You will hear this word bandied about. I have addressed this topic on my blog briefly a few times, and noted that what the Bible teaches can better be called ‘Replenishment Theology’. However, I had the opportunity to address this explicitly in a recent sermon and I wanted to share that with you on my livestream Bible study tonight.

This is not directly part of the Revelation Study, but it is relevant. Many people, including myself see in Revelation that God is judging his apostate people and he is seeking to encourage his faithful people and seeking to spur them on to endurance. And for some of these people this will raise the concept of does God replace Israel? And this idea of what does God actually replace is essential to understanding this larger issue of who God's people are. Revelation 14 even uses some of the same sort of imagery of the vine that I will address in this topic. So, I thought it would be used to make this sermon part of our Revelation study. 

You can read the notes here. But I encourage you to watch the livestream as well, or instead, because I expand on what I share here and also use a very visible prop demonstration that helps reinforce this consistent theme in the Bible. May you be blessed by this study.  

Introduction

Last week we saw how Jesus claimed to be the Godman. That is what he meant when he called himself the Son of Man. Yes, the phrase could mean human one is some contexts. But not the way Jesus uses it. He is the divine Son of Man from Daniel 7, and when he calls himself the Son of Man riding on the clouds of heaven in front of the high priests they accuse him of blasphemy, because they understood what he meant: he was claiming not just to be a god, but to be the Lord of Lords; Yehovah, Yahveh, Adonai, El Shaddai, and he was standing right in front of them.

That is what he was claiming. And they knew it.

I think many Christians have this idea of the Bible that the God of the Old Testament is the Father, and now the Son is here, and he reveals the Father to us more but he wasn’t really around that much before. However, Jesus is all over the Old Testament. Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and God the Father are there, all throughout. They are just explained in more detail in the New Testament. 

For instance, John says this, “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12:41). Who did Isaiah see? He saw Jesus’s glory. This is what John is saying. What passage does this refer to? Isaiah 6, where we read, “1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple… 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Isaiah saw the glory of Yehovah, he saw Jesus. The Son has always revealed the Father.

In other words, in the person of Jesus the God of the universe, the God of creation, the God who made the stars, the God who made the mountains and who called Abraham out of Babylon was walking among mankind. This is what we mean by the Son of God, God the Son. And we will see in this passage that he is not happy with the state of his people.

Today we are going to start to look at Matthew 21 where Jesus is going to survey his vineyard. He is going to escalate his confrontation with the leaders of Israel from here on in, until it leads to them killing him. But the message he wants them to understand is that if they were truly God’s people they would be bearing fruit. This is the same message Jeremiah preached, that Isaiah preached and so many other prophets. I want you to hold an image of a tree in your head. A tree with fruit bearing branches and barren branches, because we will come back to that. Let’s see how Jesus warns those who do not bear fruit?

It Will Be Taken Away (vv. 45-46) – Let’s begin at the end of this chapter, Jesus is here to tell them that the kingdom is no longer theirs,

“43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. 44 And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. 46 And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.”

So, what does Jesus say here? He says that the kingdom of God, or the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, Israel, is going to be taken from them, and given to someone else. If you take this away and give it to someone else. What have you done? You have replaced them. You have taken it from one group of people and given it to someone else.

What is being taken away in this context? Their stewardship of God’s nation and citizenship in his kingdom. They are being cast out of God’s people in other words.

So, this naturally raises the question has God replaced Israel? Now, just asking this question freaks some people out. Already I can see in some people’s faces where is Matt going with this? Well, I want us to go where Jesus goes. But before we do that we have to do a Biblical history lesson. So, we are to start by going back in time to Abraham and the Patriarchs.

I believe we have to do this to fully understand what is happening in Matthew 21. You see, in the Bible the name Israel is synonymous with the people of God. How could God replace that? Well, as he says, “43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” These are Jesus’ words, not mine. But to fully understand what is happening here, we have to understand God’s relationship to his people has never changed. Remember keep an image of a tree in your head. God has always replaced dead branches in his people with living branches.

He doesn’t replace the tree, he has always replaced branches. We’ll come back to what that means later on.

Faith Never Flesh (The Patriarchs) – We are not going to recount the patriarchs’ entire story, as that would take us too long. But I want us to focus on a key thread from Genesis that Paul explores in the New Testament. God promised Abram that he would have a son, in fact many sons, uncountable descendants, “5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:5-6). Then after this God promises Abram that he will possess the land of Canaan and he makes a covenant with him.

This is the passage Paul uses to show how justification works, it is by faith in God, not through works of the flesh. This is key, foundational. But it is not just foundational to understanding individual salvation, it is foundational to understanding how God’s kingdom works. It is all by faith. All of it.

Not long after this Abram and Sarai hatch a plan to have a son through Hagar, the slave girl (Gen. 16). We all know that son as Ishmael. Why do they do this? Because they are seeking to fulfil the promise of God in their flesh, Genesis 16:2, “2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” We human beings have this sinful flaw where we want to achieve the things of God through the flesh. And part of this flaw is that we often believe teachings that encourage this.

But God makes it plain to Abram that this is not the child through which the promise will come, God will give Abraham a son through Sarai, Genesis 17:15-21,

“15 And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!”…21 But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”

If you read the passage you will see that God is going to bless Ishmael and make him a great nation (17:20). But it is through Isaac that the promise will be fulfilled and what is the promise? We read it in the same passage,

“1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:1-5).

God is adamant that the promise of Abraham will not be fulfilled through Hagar and Ishmael but through Sarah and Isaac. He is adamant.

But Ishmael is Abraham’s son. He is his flesh and blood. God is going to bless Ishmael and make him a great nation as well. But the promise to bless the world will not be fulfilled through him.

Why? Why could it not come through Ishmael? Why? This seems unfair, doesn’t it. Ishmael did no wrong. Hagar did no wrong. Abraham clearly loved him. So why could it not be Ishmael? In fact, here is a better question: why did God choose an old man and a woman far past childbearing age to be the couple through which he was going to make many descendants? Why did God do this?

Simple: because he was showing Abraham, Sarah and all who would ever hear their story that the promise is not received by the children of the flesh, but only those who have faith, Hebrews 11:8-12,

“8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. 11 By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

Holding the land, the promises, the inheritance, was always about faith, not the flesh.

Listen carefully, because if you go wrong here you go wrong on most of the scriptures. God is teaching us that the promises of God were only ever for the children of faith, not the children of the flesh.

John the Baptist got it:

“7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:7-10).

Do you see that same theme? Branches that do not bear fruit are cut out. They always have been and always will be. It is how God’s kingdom works. The children of the flesh have never inherited God’s kingdom and never will, unless they also have faith.

Abraham had many sons, Ishamel, and then more, “25 Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. 2 She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.“ (Gen. 25:1-2). But only one got the inheritance, “5 Abraham gave all he had to Isaac” (Gen. 25:5). Why? Because he was the child of promise.

Isaac was the child of promise and was he told that the promise would continue through the flesh? No. We read that God said this to Rebekah, Genesis 25:22-23, “So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23 And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb,  and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”

The older is Esau (red) and the younger is Jacob (deceiver). The laws and customs of the culture in that era, and most of history, said that the inheritance should go to the first-born son. It was his birthright. This is what the flesh required.

It is no small thing to change this.

But God is teaching his people that it is never by flesh, but by the promise that his descendants are accounted. Paul makes a big deal of this in his writings,

“6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Romans 9:6-12).

Do you see how everything I was showing you is foundational to Paul’s theology? This thread of understanding that it is not by flesh but by faith that we receive the promises is key to understanding God’s kingdom.

This message is reiterated again and again and again. Who was Jacob’s first son? It was Reuben. But it is said about Judah that his brothers will bow before him,

“8 Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's sons shall bow down before you. 9 Judah is a lion's cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen. 49:10).

Reuben lost his inheritance with his father because of his behaviour. But it was Judah who confessed before Joseph the sins they had committed against him, and it was Judah who promised to take his brothers place, “33 Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. 34 For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father” (Gen. 44:33-34).

By the flesh Reuben was owed the place of prominence, but the kingdom of God does not work according to the flesh. It works according to faith and faithfulness. This is how God set it up. But the Pharisees and the Jewish people had largely forgotten this. They thought they were owed the kingdom because of who they were. But this was never the case.

The Exodus – We see this principle throughout the whole Bible. Take the Exodus for example. The entire nation who came out of Egypt who were over the age of twenty were forbidden from entering the promise land,

“28 Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: 29 your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, 30 not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. 31 But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected” (Num. 14:28-31).

Was it unjust for God to exclude the entire nation over twenty, except two men, from entering the land promised to them? They were Hebrews. They were descendants of Abraham. They were even saved from Egypt and the power of Pharoah, which is a picture of our salvation from the oppression of sin and the devil.

How could these descendants of Abraham, these Israelites, who were there at the 10 plagues, the parting of the sea, the splitting of the rock, at Mt Sinai and the giving of the law, not be able to inherit the promise?

Simple: because it is only those who receive it by faith who can inherit it. They saw the Nephilim and the mighty inhabitants of the land, and they lost their faith. They looked with eyes of flesh, not eyes of faith.

As Hebrews says,

“12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God…16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief” (Heb. 4:12, 16-19)

They were unable to enter because of faith. It really appears that there is a consistent theme in the bible when it comes to God’s kingdom, doesn’t it. 

And to drive the point home even more, a Canaanite got to inherit the promise that the descendants of the flesh did not. Her name is Rahab, “8 Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof 9 and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you” (Josh. 2:8-9).

Compare Rahab to the cowardly Hebrews. They feared the people in Canaan, but the people of Canann were afraid of them and their God. But notice also that Rahab had believed the promise, “I know that the Lord has given you the land…” That’s faith.

Rahab was not descended from Abraham. She was a Canaanite. She ran a brothel of all things. But she believed the promise. And because she believed it she inherited it. In fact, she was Boaz’ mother, Matthew 1:5, “and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse,…”

So, you can see there is a consistent theme: the promises of God are secure and sure. But they are not and never were intended for the flesh, but only for those who trust in God and his promises. God went out of his way to drive this message home to the Israelites,

“13 And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. 16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; 17 then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you” (Deut. 11:13-17).

All of the promises in the Bible of what we can receive come with an implied condition: if you continue in faith. If you believe. Even when this condition is not stated in that verse, just keep reading you will find it.

Part of the problem is people don’t read the Bible in context. They read a verse for the day, then they listen to a sermon which gives a verse for the day, and then they get a skewed view of the promises of God.

God never intended his promises to be inherited by flesh. Whether the land in Canaan or the new promise land in heaven. Access to the kingdom of God has always been by faith. Only branches connected by faith bear fruit. 

The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is Israel, and like any good gardener he prunes out the bad branches so that they can be replaced with branches that bear good fruit. So, let’s now turn to that theme.

Pruning the Branches – Remember, I am setting the scene for you this morning for what Jesus is doing in Matthew 21. Remember, he is the King of Israel. They will welcome him as a king and then not long after they kill him. But remember Jesus does this in Matthew 21, “18 In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.” This is no random event. Jesus has just cleansed the temple. He went into the temple and found no good fruit. Then he comes before this fig tree and finding no good fruit he curses it. Like I said this is no accident. The fig tree here is a symbol of the nation of Israel and it has been corrupted.

A good example of this imagery being used comes from Jeremiah 8:13, “13 When I would gather them, declares the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.” Jeremiah is saying the exact same thing as Jesus. He is looking at the house of Judah, the temple, the priests, the people and he is saying, “You are not bearing fruit.” And what does God do with branches that won’t bear fruit? He prunes them so that fruit bearing branches are prioritized.  

The illustration – This is where I want to put all this in picture form for you today. Because what Jesus says in Matthew 21, which we will explore next time in more detail, is that he is going to prune the dead branches and allow good branches to grow, “43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

Some people might read this and say, “Ah ha! There it is right there. God is going to take the kingdom of God away from Israel and give it to the Church!” There it is in black and white. But I am here to show that is a misunderstanding.

Some people read this and say, “But that’s replacement theology. God would not replace his people!” But they are also presenting a misunderstanding. Both those groups are wrong. In fact, the term “replacement theology” was invented in the 1980’s as a slur to denigrate historical Christianity which has always taught there is one people of God and it is those who trust in Jesus, the Messiah.

But something is being replaced in this passage, what is it? The answer is that the branches that do not bear fruit are being replaced. The Pharisees, the chief priests and their followers amongst the people of Israel who reject Jesus are going to be cut out of the tree, and Peter, James and John and all who followed Jesus will inherit the kingdom. Jesus is here to prune the tree, not replace it. Call it Israel, call it the Church, the flock, the bride, whatever you will, it is the same tree.

This image of the tree or vine is used all throughout the whole Bible. I have already shared some in this sermon. Here are a few more,  

Isaiah 5:5-7,

“5 And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6 I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. 7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!”

God is pruning the vineyard because it has not born fruit. The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is Israel. So, when Jesus says he is the true vine, what is he saying?

John 15:1-6,

“15 I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

Jesus is the true vine, the true Israel, and only those who truly believe in him will bear fruit. The rest are cut off and thrown into the fire.

Our flesh accounts for nothing, only faith in God that produces good fruit counts.

And of course, the most famous example is Romans 11, which will round off our examples today,

“21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree” (Rom. 11:21-24).

Here Paul finishes his argument about who the true Israel is, and he says it is all who believe. Those who reject Christ, even if they are Jewish, are cut out of the tree. Those who trust in Jesus, even if they are Gentiles, are grafted into the tree.

But don’t be arrogant, you must continue in faith, “20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear” (Rom. 11:20). What is being proud in this context? It is relying on the flesh and not on faith.

This is the mistake that most of Israel made when Jesus came, and which Jesus is going to challenge in Matthew 21, 22 and 23. This is the mistake that Paul is determined to make sure that we do not copy. And it goes all the way back to Abraham, we saw it there. The child of promise inherited the promises, not the child of the flesh.

Application – This is where I drive it home and personalize this message for you: are you are fruit bearing branch? If Israelites, who were descended from Abraham, who did not bear fruit could be cut out of the tree, how much more could you an Australian, or South African, or Indian, or Brit, or European, or whoever you are be cut out if we do not bear fruit?

Do you know what God did when he destroyed the temple in AD 70? He removed the lampstand from the physical nation of Israel. But he also prophesied to the 7 churches that he would do the same to them if they did not bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

If you want to determine who the people of God are, you can’t look to a modern nation that claims the name Israel. I know some people really struggle with this. This happens because God’s people have always struggled not to see with eyes of flesh. But Jesus gives us to key to know where his people are: You have to look at who is bearing fruit. Only fruit bearing branches are truly of God.

Every generation has had to hear this same warning: only fruit bearing branches will inherit the kingdom. Because bearing fruit comes through faith, not the flesh. “43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

So, are you bearing fruit? Are you a truly believing fruit bearing branch? Because God will never replace his people. But he will replace branches that do not bear fruit with those that do.

Conclusion – Now you know where I am coming from on this. And why I will stick to this message. Flesh counts for nothing in God’s economy. He wants us to be people of faith. Let’s pray that he increases our faith and the fruit in our lives. Let’s pray.