Is modern Israel a divinely-favored nation? For many Christians, the answer is a resounding yes. 

Why is that?

Most of us know the biblical history concerning God’s calling of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the latter of whom became the father of Israel’s twelve tribes. We know the story of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and their subsequent God-ordered conquest of the land of Canaan, which became the geographical territory of ancient Israel. We know that Jesus was descended from the tribe of Judah, and that His birth, ministry, death, burial and resurrection all took place in ancient Israel.

Over the past fifteen years, the ministry of Heaven’s Family has raised more than 30 million dollars to expand Jesus’ kingdom and serve “the least of these” (Matt. 25:31-46) all over the world. That 30 million dollars did not fall from the sky! Rather, it was raised through the very hard work of dedicated staff members, and given by thousands of people just like them, people who have also been transformed by the grace of God and the Holy Spirit. Praise God that the Holy Spirit turns selfish people into selfless people! Their cooperation, of course, is necessary, but the glory goes to God, and all of us will one day be casting our crowns at the feet of Jesus.

If someone’s salvation hasn’t yet affected their wallet and bank account, it hasn’t yet affected their heart. Those kinds of “Christians” need, as I once heard an old Pentecostal pastor say, “another dip”! I don’t think he was recommending that they be re-baptized with hopes of a better outcome, but that they be truly born again by a genuine faith.

Non-Calvinists often object to Calvinism’s doctrine of “Unconditional Election” based on its perceived injustice and immorality. Calvinists claim that only a minority of people are divinely and sovereignly predestined to be saved, and their being selected is based on nothing that God foresaw in them that pleased Him. That means that all others are predestined to be forever damned. It is therefore “double-predestination.” Non-Calvinists often say Calvinists, “Your doctrine of Unconditional Election makes God look like a monster, because you are saying that He created people just to torture them forever.”

Calvinists often retort by saying, “But you believe that God foreknows everyone who will choose to believe in Jesus and who will not choose to believe in Jesus, and yet He still creates the ones whom He knows will not believe in Jesus, and then He tortures them forever. So, if my God is a monster, so is yours!”

I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief (1 Tim. 1:13).

Paul, a former Christian-hater and persecutor, knew that he had received a very big dose of mercy from God. Why was the Lord so incredibly merciful towards him, but not as much towards other incorrigible characters of whom we read in Scripture?

One apparent reason was because of Paul’s ignorance. As he persecuted the early church, Paul thought he was serving God. His heart was right. And the Lord factored that in when He appraised him. But the Lord quickly eradicated Paul’s ignorance: “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” From then on, Paul was without excuse.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 13:1-3).

God doesn’t figure out what is in our hearts by using x-ray vision. Rather, He listens to our words and watches our actions. Jesus said, “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt. 15:18-19, emphasis added). Our hearts are revealed by our words and our actions.

In my Christian life over the past 50 years, at least three times I’ve watched a wave of “deliverance ministry” sweep through a segment of the church. The first time was when I was just a relatively new Christian, in the late 1970s. A man named Don Basham, who was part of a group of five popular teachers based in Ft. Lauderdale who jointly published a magazine called “New Wine,” wrote a book titled Deliver Us from Evil. It became quite popular within the growing “Charismatic Renewal” that was sweeping through the denominational world.

I read that book and learned that I could actually cast demons out of myself. As an adolescent male, I also realized from reading that book that I had a demon of lust. So, I followed its instructions for self-deliverance.

You may be surprised to learn that there was never a debate in New Testament times regarding “salvation by grace” versus “salvation by works.” Never.

Rather, the debate was over salvation by grace through faith versus salvation by works.

Paul wrote, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Did you notice that Paul did not contrast “grace” and “works”? Rather, he contrasted “grace through faith” and “works.”

That distinction is very important. Because when the New Testament debate is presented by modern teachers as if it was a debate between salvation by grace versus salvation by works, it misrepresents the actual debate, and it spawns false doctrines that are based on a false premise. It pits grace against works, whereas the actual New Testament debate blended both together. Allow me to prove that.

Many folks are surprised when I tell them that I am a big believer in eternal security. But it’s true. And here is one of many scriptures on which I base my belief:

He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name (Rev. 3:12).

Although all five rewards Jesus promised to overcomers are mysterious to us, all of them speak of eternal security.

Last week I responded to a popular Facebook post titled, “Does the Thief on the Cross Fit into Your Theology?” That post, in part, seems to promote a form of unconditional, lawless grace. That makes it just another twist on the false-grace gospel that essentially amounts to a license to sin. The true gospel is a temporary offer to (1) believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, (2) turn from sin, (3) be graciously forgiven, (4) be indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then (5) have the opportunity to follow the narrow path that leads to life that Jesus outlined in His Sermon on the Mount and all the apostles reiterated in their letters.

In this teaching, I thought it might be good to consider a few of Jesus’ encounters with other people who, just like the thief on the cross, wanted to enter Paradise. Each encounter clearly reveals Jesus’ conditional grace in salvation.It is good, of course, to make sure the actual story of the thief on the cross fits into our theology. But should the thief on the cross, an impaled, dying man, with a few hours left to live, serve as the sole example of how God’s grace works in salvation? Certainly not.

In past years, and recently, I’ve seen a Facebook post that is being repeatedly shared, titled, “How Does the Thief on the Cross Fit into Your Theology?” The text communicates several messages. One of them seems to be that, because a man who had a few hours to live was never baptized, volunteered to help others, took the Lord’s Supper, went on a mission trip and so on, but was promised Paradise by Jesus, that proves God doesn’t expect anything from those of us who have decades of life remaining to serve Him. It’s a little different twist on the very popular “false-grace message.” How false-grace preachers love to isolate and twist passages of Scripture!

Because the incident of Jesus forgiving the repentant thief on the cross isn’t the only story in the Bible, I’d like to ask a very legitimate question: How Does Noah’s flood fit into your theology?