We can also look to the New Testament to see the outworking of the Abrahamic covenant:

c)  In Acts 10, God chooses to bless the Roman Centurion, Cornelius.

Now the Romans were no friends of the Jews and yet this man had the great honour of being the first Gentile to be received into the Church as a Gentile rather than a convert to Judaism. Why this particular Gentile? Acts 10:2 gives the answer that Cornelius was “a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.”  Of all the Gentiles God could have chosen as the first to come into the Body of Christ, a great honour, He picked one who was not only righteous but who blessed the Jewish people and according to verse 22 was well spoken off by the entire nation. Coincidence?

Conclusion: so we see that throughout the Bible, God has been faithful to his covenant made with Abraham: those who bless the Jews will be blessed and those who curse them will be cursed. Because of God’s love for Israel, he loves and blesses those who show love to them.  We haven’t got time to look at this now, but there are also examples of how the fortunes of entire nations seem to be linked to how they have treated the Jewish people throughout history. This may be difficult to prove, but what is undeniable, is that all that’s left of the empires that conquered and mistreated the Jewish nation are some dusty remnants in a museum whereas the Jews continue to thrive. Mark Twain wrote at the end of the 19th century:

"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"

What Mr Twain didn’t know is that the secret of their immortality is their Covenant-keeping God!

2. How the whole world has been blessed by the Jewish people

God gave Abram a great promise that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. I want to look at three ways this promise has been fulfilled in history.

a) Jewish Scriptures

The Apostle Paul writes in  Romans 3:1-2 that all the Scriptures were given to the Jews for safeguarding:  “What advantage then has the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way: first of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.”

The printing press was not invented until the 15th C – until then mass production of manuscripts was impossible. How times have changed today – most of us take for granted that we have not one but several copies of the Bible at home. In wasn’t the case in ancient times when to own your own copy of the Scriptures was a rare and expensive thing.

Paul says we have the Jewish people to thank for being entrusted with the very words of God. Not only did they receive the Word of God, they preserved it. The Jewish scribes faithfully copied the text of the Bible down the millennia.  When one text became old and worn out the scribes would carefully make new copies. Just how carefully is known: When the word GOD was encountered, the scribe’s pen had to be wiped clean – no big deal perhaps but when YHWH was encountered, the scribe had to wash his body before he could write it – that would have meant some very clean scribes! 

Each letter and word was counted. Any mistake on a page, the page was condemned. Three mistakes on one page condemned the whole manuscript – imagine if there were three mistakes discovered on the very last page!

And then, remember what a blessing the Jewish scriptures have been to us. They have given us the knowledge of God and how we can find a relationship with Him through his Son. They’ve inspired Christian leaders who brought an end to the slave trade, began healthcare and education for the masses, and fought for various reforms like workers rights and prison welfare – people like William Wilberforce.

Our modern democracy is in huge debt to the Scriptures such as the Magna Carta with its Christian author. The Word of God has shaped our entire civilisation giving us laws that protect the common man since the Bible taught equality of all people. Missionaries have spread these values around the world, enabling entire nations to be shaped by the message of the Bible. Without the Jewish Scriptures, our country and many others around the world would be very different.

b) The Jewish Saviour

As He was speaking to a Samaritan woman who had her own way of salvation, Jesus stated in John 4:22: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” The Bible contains many promises that from the Jewish people would come a man, the Messiah, who would save not only Israel but the whole world from the devastating consequences of sin and restore peace with God.

Jesus, or Yeshua to give his Hebrew name, was through and through Jewish. Many people picture Him as a blue eyed, blonde haired Scandavian as you might see in many a church stained window. But nothing could be further from the truth! He would have been of a dark complexion and middle eastern in his appearance.

Galatians 4:4 -5: “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Jesus was born under the law, meaning He was a Jew. As a good Jew, Jesus obeyed the Law of Moses, eating kosher food (so no ham sandwiches or sausage rolls!) and attending all the required feasts as recorded in the gospels. The reason verse 5 says "He was born a Jew" was to redeem the Jews that were under the law of Moses and that we [Jews and Gentiles together] might receive the adoption of sons.

Paul explains in Galatians ch 3 that Christ redeemed the Jewish people from the curse of the Law. Why? Just for their sake? No, so that through him the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we too may be joined to the people of God. What a wonderful Saviour we have!

c) Jewish Spiritual Blessings

As a result of our salvation through the Jewish Messiah, the Bible says that those who have trusted in Him have received wonderful blessings in fact in Ephesians 1:3 Paul tells us we have received “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ”. Later on in  2:12, Paul explains further that these blessings come through the “covenants of promise” that God gave Israel. For example, the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant made with King David and the New Covenant were all made with the Jewish people.