Whose Heritage?

Today I read from two different passages. Isaiah 56-58 and Romans 11:1-18. These passages are quite different, but yet seem to speak to the same thing.

1. God perserves a remnant for himself....and sometimes that remnant is not Jewish in origin.
2. Those who are "grafted into" God's family should not feel proud.
3. NEITHER should they (the graftee's) feel that they will be abandoned by God.
4. The jewish people should know that it is a shameful thing that God turns away from them to peoples beyond.

As the Lord himself says in Isaiah 56

8The Lord GOD,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
"I will gather yet others to him
besides those already gathered."

and then later in Romans

11So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. 12Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!
13Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry 14in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. 15For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? 16If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

God wants his people...to be exactly that...HIS PEOPLE.

He doesn't want them wandering off after other things. He doesn't want them to think that they are safe simply because they are Jewish OR born into a Christian family. He wants his people to:

• keep his Sabbath (not profane it) and to delight in it
  
• know that they are his through grace (not works)
• holds fast to God's promises to them (not be covenant breakers)
  
• choose the things that please him (not themselves)
• keep justice
• be righteous
• be his servants
• have a contrite and lowly spirit
• to be part of his larger family

These are the things that God's wants. The people who do these things, regardless of their physical/cultural heritage, will receive the heritage of God! They will be part of one large family. They will be part of the remnant that God will perserve.