A portion of Samuel Rutherford’s masterful Trial and Triumph of Faith, a series of sermons in which he treats the Lord’s dealings with the Syro-phoenician “dog” who yet “ate the crumbs falling from the childrens’ table.” Here we see him waxing eloquent on the high privileges of Israel “after the flesh,” and then plying the Gentile church not to be hard-hearted but to pray for the conversion of these “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Listen to the full sermon here; and check out the entire WPE Audio library here.
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“OF ISRAEL.” It was then a privileged mercy, that Christ was sent to the Jews. (1.) The Jew is the elder brother, and the native heir of Christ. Christ is of their blood and house. (Rom. 1:2,3, and 9:3.) They were Christ’s first bride. Alas! they killed their husband. There is a born Jew in heaven, in soul and body: it is sweet to have any relation to Christ. (2.) The catholic covenant of grace made with the great sister, the Church Universal, was first laid down in pawn in their hand; they put their hand first to the contract, in subscribing the marriage contract, (Jer. chapters 2 and 3). Israel was holy to the Lord, and the first fruits of his increase. Oh, sweet! the fallen race of mankind was Christ’s corn-field, and his wheat. The Jews were the first sheaf of the field, (Deut. 7:6). They got Christ’s young love, and, (to speak so,) the first handsel of free grace in a church-way. (3.) Christ, in the Jewish flesh, (yet not excluding Ruth, Rahab, and other Gentiles of the blood-royal,) acted the whole gospel. A born Jew redeemed the lost world, offered a sacrifice to God for sinners: a born Jew is heir of all things, is exalted a prince to guide and rule all, and shall judge men and angels. (4.) The Lord Christ, in the flesh, was first offered to them; they had the first gospel-love, (Matt. 10:5,6; Acts 13:46). (5.) The oracles of God were committed to them, (Romans 3:1; 9:4); the testator Christ’s written will, was in their keeping. (6.) God was their first crowned King. He gave Ethiopia, and Egypt, and Zeba, a ransom for them, and was their lawgiver. (7.) Every male child among the Jews did bear somewhat of Christ in his flesh, (Col. 2:11) when all the world was without Christ. (8.) Their land was Christ’s by a special typical right. God saith of it, “It is my land.” Christ was their sovereign landlord, and they the great King’s freeholders. (9.) The Lord never dwelt in a house made with hands, in a temple, as amongst them, having special respect to the true Temple, Jesus Christ, (John 2:19).
USE 1. Let us pray our elder sister home to Christ. They said, “We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts; what shall we do for our sister in the day that she shall be spoken for?” (Cant. 8:8.) Now, we have a greater sister, what shall we, the Gentiles, do for her? There is a day when “ten men shall take hold, out of all nations, of the skirt of a Jew, saying, We will go with you; we have heard that God is with you” (Zech. 8:23.) . . .
USE 3. The Jews had the morning market of Christ, and they would not pay the rent of the vineyard to the Lord thereof. We have the afternoon of Christ; and know we what a mercy it is, that “our Beloved feedeth amongst the lilies, till the day break, and the shadows fly away;” and that “the voice of the turtle is heard in our land”? God, for our abuse of the gospel, hath sent among us the bloody pursuivants, and officers of his wrath, men skilful to destroy; God is now in three kingdoms, arresting the carcases of men. We are owing much to God; he will now have husbands and sons from us, and legs and arms of wounded and slain men from us, for that rent we owe to the Lord of the vineyard,—for our contempt of the gospel.
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