There was a time, we know, in the world’s history, when God took a directly governing interest in what was going on among men. Even their battles were said to be Jehovah’s battles; and their defeats and famines were sent as a known infliction from Him for some evil that He was dealing with.
Now, while it remains perfectly true that there is no war or sorrow of any kind that happens without God, and all is decidedly under His sovereign control, it is not in the way of the same direct government. So that a person cannot now say, This war is at the word of God; or This famine is a chastening for such and such an evil. Such language would be both ignorance and presumption. No doubt, there are persons quite ready enough to pronounce as to these matters. Their mistake arises from not appreciating the great change that has taken place in God’s government of the world.
As long as Israel was the nation in which God was displaying His character for the earth, victories and defeats, joy and woe, came immediately from Him. But from the time God gave up His people Israel, it has been merely an indirect or providential control of a general kind that He exercises over human affairs.
Another thing has come in. When the true Christ was rejected by Israel, and Israel thereby lost their opportunity of being restored to their place of supremacy, God, we may say, took advantage of this to bring in another thing—the calling of the church. It was no longer God governing a nation like Israel under His law; nor was it simply an indirect government of the Gentiles; but the revelation of Himself as a Father to His children in Christ, and the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, not only to act upon their hearts, but to dwell in their midst, and to baptize them, Jew or Gentile, into one body, the body of Christ and Head in heaven. This goes on now. And therefore God has no particular relations with the Jews now. He does not deal with them any more than with others, save that they have a sentence of judicial blindness upon them. They were blind before, God did not make them to refuse Christ. He never makes any person blind in that sense: only sin thus blinds. But when men refuse the light of God, and obstinately reject His every testimony, He may and does give up sometimes to a total darkness, in the sense of its being a judicial one, added to what is natural to the human heart.