The Alpha of What False Rags to True Riches Mean

UV 3114/10000 The Alpha of What Rags to True Riches Mean
Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?
Romans 11 v 12
The Amplified version puts this uni-verse in clearer terms for us to understand its import and significance in this manner: “ Now if Israel’s transgression means riches for the world (at large) and their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment and reinstatement be!” It implies that the descendants of Jacob or Israel moved away from having a personal relationship with God as their ancestors Jacob, his father Isaac and his father Abraham had. They replaced their personal relationship with God with the religion of Judaism. Judaism is an elaborate religion of keeping of many rules and rituals. They substituted true faith- a one to One relationship with the Creator God with the rags of religion, freedom and power and love with slavery and spiritual poverty and narrowness. Indeed, all man-made religion puts man in rags while true spirituality based on historical facts of the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus is the key to accessing amazing and awesome spiritual riches beyond what one’s eye can see or ear hear or enter our imagination. This is also the reason that the Old Testament dismisses our good deeds motivated by considerations of religion as being “dirty or filthy rags.” These are the rags in which every sinner returns to the Father but the older Son, Jesus, unlike the elder brother in the parable of Jesus steps in and tells the Father that He has paid the price to restore the sinners to sonship, to sharing His own abundant spiritual riches of inheritance.
While religion like rags barely covers the nakedness of man and does not keep him warm and protected from the elements, salvation in Jesus that most of Israel has consistently rejected is complete cover from head to foot, from past to present to future to eternity for every believer. Since the Jews rejected Jesus, their Messiah, it proved to the benefit of the rest of the world that the gospel was preached in all other nations. The Jews historically have stuck to their rags instead of embracing their spiritual inheritance, now enjoyed by believers in all other nations. When the word says, “Turn to the wall and pray”, it implies, “Turn to the One who proved Himself stronger than sin, satan and death- Jesus, the Messiah of both Jews and Gentiles.” But their religion teaches them to turn to the one remaining wall of the Temple in Jerusalem and shake their heads mournfully.
But St Paul, also a Jew by birth and the most zealous of them who persecuted most severely the early believers of Christ, had hope that like his spiritual blindness ended with a blinding vision of Jesus and ended his habit of holding onto the rags of religion. He states in this uni-verse that the Jews will one day be reinstated and they will come into their full inheritance- true spiritual riches of eternal and abundant life in Christ. They will hold in their hands the full set of the keys to life that the Father has given us in the Word. They will be restored from miserable rags to glorious and eternal riches. The lesson for us who are of other races and believe in Jesus is to pray that the Lord will hasten the restoration of Israel to their spiritual inheritance for the word says, “ Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” The peace of Jerusalem is not a political peace but Shalom- a word that sums up all the spiritual riches that the Father gives His children by faith in the older Son, Jesus.