Chapter 8
Grafted In
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain; When he was one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him”
Isaiah 51:2
Now we can look back to our roots, to our origins. The reason why we are children of God today is only because of one man; that is Abraham. God promised Abraham that his seed will be as the stars in heaven and as the sand on the sea shore that cannot be counted. He told him that this promise and this covenant will be extended to his son Isaac. Later on he appeared to Jacob confirming the covenant .
(Genesis 22:16,17 ;26:4 ;28:14).
In the Hebrew the word for seed is Zerah. Zerah can only be natural, like in the male sperm, or the seed of a plant. So when the Lord sowed Ephraim among the nations, he sowed natural seed of Abraham that multiplied and became ‘theFullness of the Gentiles’.
In that sense the Lord was fulfilling His promise to Abraham that his ‘zerah’, his seed will become as ‘the stars in heaven’.God does not waste the seed of Abraham in vain. He is a good farmer, and always expects a plentiful crop!
In Romans 11:17 it says: “But if some of the (natural) branches were broken off, and you being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant towards the branches...”
But what is a wild olive tree? And what is the difference between a wild olive tree and between a cultivated olive tree? First of all we need to know that olive trees live for a long long time. There are some ancient olive trees in Israel today that could have been there even when Jesus came. Secondly we need to know that olive trees reproduce a fruit called ‘olives’. This fruit has a high content of oil called ‘olive oil’. Olive oil was used in the Temple worship, it was used by the prophets when they anointed the kings of Israel.
And it was used by the shepherds to rub into the wounds of the sheep.
The way that ‘wild’ olive trees are produced is when branches of a cultivated olive tree are broken off and neglected and grow by themselves. When a wild olive grows like this he normally tends to spread very rapidly and tends to have a lot of very thin fruit. That is fruit that does not have much oil.
When the 10 tribes of Israel multiplied among the nations they became an uncultivated unattended wild olive tree, but through the message of the Cross they become grafted into the cultivated olive tree and that is Israel. Being grafted into the cultivated olive tree is being grafted into the nation of Israel. “Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘uncircumcision’ by the so called ‘circumcision’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands - remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the common wealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:11-13). Being grafted in means that you now belong to the common wealth of Israel. Not that you have replaced Israel but actually rejoined Israel.
Then we can understand Romans 11:11; “I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles to make them jealous”. God is wanting to use the Church to make the Jews jealous and eager to have their God back! But a Church that is divorced from its roots and alienated from the common wealth of Israel and from the Torah, can never make a Jew jealous.
A Church that celebrates pagan feasts and rejects the holy feasts of the Lord and celebrates a Gentile Jesus, instead of the Jewish Messiah that He is, can never fulfill its call to cause the Jews to be jealous.
One of the major strongholds that developed after the ‘divorce’ from our roots is that Jesus became ‘gentilized’ and we cannot relate to Him as a Jew anymore. But being grafted-in means that we accept both the Jewish Messiah and His people, who are actually our own people. In the book of Revelation Yeshua (Jesus) is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
(Revelation 5:5).He is also called our Mediator, ‘the man Jesus the Messiah’.
(I Timothy 2:5) He has the marks of the nails in His hands, don’t you think that He has the marks of circumcision in His body?(Luke 2:21). Jesus rose from the dead as a man with a glorified body and His identity remains Jewish all the way through the book of Revelation. He is still the ‘son of David’, and the son of David is a Jew.(Matthew 1:1)
The Lord has chosen a Jew to rule for all eternity and therefore His Bride as depicted in Revelations 21 is an Israeli Bride and the gates are the 12 tribes of Israel and the foundation stones, the 12 Jewish apostles of the Lamb. The Jewish Messiah is the fulfillment to the promise to Abraham and as we are ‘grafted in’ through Him into His people we become one with a unity that is not of this world.
When Yeshua prayed in John 17: 22,23, ‘that we may all be one’, He was talking to Jews, as all the believers were Jews at that time. And He was saying that others would come in through their message. He actually was saying : When they come in, accept them as part of the ‘Common Wealth of Israel’. Become one with them as your own ‘flesh and blood’. Many Jews are about to join the Body. They cannot join a Gentilized Church and many of them will have a prophetic word of restoration back to the roots. The Lord is about to make Jerusalem His throne, as depicted in Jeremiah 3:17. He will come back to Jerusalem for His 1000 year reign, (Revelation 20:4). Now He is preparing His city, His Jewish people and His Church...Many things will change as the Lord restores all of the truth that has been stolen from the Church as He heals the outcome of this age old divorce from our roots.
There is a lot of talk about unity in the Body of Messiah. We all want to break dividing walls and become one. That unity can only be attained if we go back to our roots to become one within the olive tree and not inventing another religious system. I do not mean that we have to become religious Jews and practice Rabbinical Judaism. What I mean is that we have to allow the Law to be written on our hearts and be reconnected to our Biblical Roots: Jeremiah 31:31-33, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord when I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them” declares the Lord. “ But this is the covenant which I will make with the House of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them, and on their hearts I will write it; and I will be their God and they will be My people.” Notice that this New Covenant is to be made with the two Houses, or the two sides of the kingdom of Israel; the House of Israel which represents Ephraim and the fullness of the Gentiles’ and with the House of Judah, which represents the Jewish people of today.
Then we can understand what is written in Ezekiel 37:15-17
“The word of the Lord came again to me saying, and you son of man, take for yourself one stick and write on it, ‘For Judah and for the sons of Israel, his companions; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel his companions. Then join them for yourself one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand.”
There is a powerful unity coming as the Lord is about to unite the Church and Judah, so that together they become the Bride of Christ. The Fullness of the Gentiles is coming in great numbers and then all of Israel is going to be saved, just as it is written.
A Prayer of conclusion
Dear heavenly Father I thank you that you are an awesome God. One who keeps covenant and shows mercy even unto the thousand generations. Thank you that you never forgot your covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thank you that as I am regrafted into Israel, I belong to the ‘Commonwealth of Israel’. The people of Israel are my people and I love them. I accept you, Yeshua as my Jewish Messiah. Thank you that you are the Lion of the tribe of Judah. I am now a partaker of the rich root of the olive tree, and I stand in agreement with your word that all of Israel will be saved. I ask you to use me to make my Jewish brothers jealous of my walk with you, so that they would come back to you.
Please teach me practical ways on how to extend mercy and compassion to the Jewish people so that they may be called Ruhammah as well.
In Yeshua’s name I pray. Amen
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