God wants to use us to share the Gospel with both Jews and Gentiles. Jesus Christ wept over Jerusalem and longed to gather His people in His arms! Instead, those arms were stretched out on a cross where He willingly died for Jews and Gentiles alike.

God is long-suffering and patient, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

While Israel as a nation has been set aside, individual Jewish people can be saved and are being saved. When Paul ministered to the Jews in Rome while he was a prisoner, he expounded the Scriptures to them and sought to convince them from morning until evening that Jesus is the Messiah.

Through Paul, God was stretching out His arms of love to His disobedient people, yearning over them, and asking them to return. God’s favor to the Gentiles did not change His love for the Jews. It is the same love we need to show both Jew and Gentile, saved and unsaved.

Verse for today: “The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God” (Isaiah 10:21).

More to read: Isaiah 65:2; Acts 28:23; 2 Peter 3:9.

Action assignment: The old spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” reminds us that God’s love includes everybody. Imagine the world in your hands for a moment. Would you love all of it or only a few select continents? Would you drop the world like a gigantic hot potato, letting it drift off into the Milky Way?

God wants us to share His Good News with everyone we can. He has a special yearning for the Jews, with whom He made the first covenant, but that does not mean He wants Gentiles to know Him any less. Ask God to enlarge your understanding of the scope of God’s love and your role in proclaiming it.

WARREN W. WIERSBE
www.backtothebible.in