THE DOWNFALL OF THE JEWS
‘Because of unbelief they were broken off.’
Look at the Jews as they are in the very midst of us at this moment. They are everybody’s open book of evidence; they, who can read no other, can read that. There they are. You meet them in the street; you are familiar with them in business; you see them every day, and you cannot mistake them. They have their own mark. And in every country of the earth they stand a living witness to every man of the truth of God’s own Word. They are the old prophecies, dating back from Deuteronomy, more than three thousand years ago. If the Bible had no other credential it is there. Every Jewish face you see is a proof of inspiration, stamped and sealed of God.
I. But where, where has been the secret of this great downfall?—From end to end it has been ‘unbelief.’ Abraham disbelieved in Egypt and fell into Pharaoh’s hand. Jacob disbelieved the promise and sought his inheritance by treachery. ‘Through unbelief’ they could not enter the Holy Land, and wellnigh a whole generation perished in the wilderness! It was ‘unbelief’ which set up all the idols from Dan to Beersheba, from the death of Joshua to Zedekiah’s reign. ‘Unbelief’ sent them to Babylon. ‘Unbelief’ spread the Sadduceeism which gradually pervaded the whole nation after captivity. ‘Unbelief’ could not see the veiled dignity and the inherent Godhead in ‘the Man of Nazareth,’ but saw only in ‘the Carpenter’s Son’ an impostor, and the destroyer of law in its own antitype, and the hard reprover in the Man of Love. And ‘unbelief’ called spiritual inspiration ‘drunkenness,’ and made Divine miracles ‘Satanic agency,’ and quickly blasphemed the gentle influences and strong convictions of the Holy Ghost.
II. ‘Unbelief’ did its own proper work, and what they would not believe they could not have; and they failed of the realities of their own salvation only because what was real was not real to them. And it is again only an epitome of the great law of cause and effect which has ruled the whole moral government of this world: ‘because of unbelief they were broken off.’
Rev. James Vaughan.