It doesn't include gentiles. It includes former gentiles who have been grafted into Israel through the shed blood of Christ.
This was always God's intent...even when he established ancient Israel:
Lev_19:34 The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
God never intended that there be some artificial wall erected by the Jewish religion....his intent was to make worship of him inclusive, not exclusive.
How did the promises God made to the Jews in the Old Testament, thousands of years before the Church was established, possibly apply to the Church?
I think you're confusing the Jewish religion with the Israel that the Lord established. As you can see from the scripture above they were quite different. By the time of Christ the Jewish religion had made it a crime to associate with "strangers" gentiles, much less love them.
I think also that you're creating an artificial wall between the "Church" and Israel. They are one and the same through Christ.
Where in Scripture do you get the idea that the promises made to Israel include the Church?
Eph 2:11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands—
Eph 2:12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Eph 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Eph 2:14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation,
Gentiles are always Gentiles. They don't become Jews if they happen to become saved. God never makes that distinction in Scripture and it doesn't happen.
Lev_19:34 The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
The book of Leviticus is the book of the Law. God is telling the Jews there that anyone who happens to be among them, as in travelers or those staying for a time, are subject to the Law while they are there. Nowhere does that passage even hint that the covenants God made with Israel and His promises to them apply to those who happen to be among them at any given time.
God never intended that there be some artificial wall erected by the Jewish religion....his intent was to make worship of him inclusive, not exclusive.
Among those in Christ, there is no difference. Among believers, there is no difference between Jew and Gentile and male and female. There is and will remain a difference between the spiritual body of believers known as the "Church" and physical, literal, Israel. God says there is no difference between male and female in Christ, yet gives men and women different roles in the Church and in the home. Why does He still separate and make a distinction between men and women who are saved? If we are one and the same, why did God differentiate men and women even though we are Christian? The Church is a spiritual body, made up of people from every walk of life and every country. It is not a nation that they are born into, like the nation of Israel. God makes that distinction, and gives man not one iota of permission to merge the two together.
It is only fallen, arrogant, unredeemed man, who, with absolutely no indication from God, who spiritualizes all of the Bible to twist it to make it mean what he wants it to mean. The covenants, with the exception of the Mosaic covenant which the New Covenant which God made with Israel, not Gentiles, replaced, and promises God made to Israel, not the Church, are still in effect and have not been made null and void by the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross.
You have not produced one verse of Scripture where God says that His covenants and promises to Israel were cancelled with the death of Christ. And as long as you have no Scriptural validation, your belief is man-created and is a false doctrine.
I think you're confusing the Jewish religion with the Israel that the Lord established. As you can see from the scripture above they were quite different. By the time of Christ the Jewish religion had made it a crime to associate with "strangers" gentiles, much less love them.
I think also that you're creating an artificial wall between the "Church" and Israel. They are one and the same through Christ.
I think you are denying and rejecting what God said about His plans for Israel and His promises to them. And you have given no Scripture where God authorizes you to do that. I think you have made a choice to decide which parts of God's Word are true and which are false. I think you have taken it upon yourself to pick and choose the Scripture that you like and dismiss the Scripture you don't like based on a false doctrine that you have been taught. I think you need to read post 33 to see how far in dangerous territory you actually are.
And the Scripture you gave at the end has not one word in it that indicates that the promises God made to the nation of Israel includes Gentiles or the Church or that the promises God made to the nation of Israel have been cancelled.
Where does God say that David will be king over Christians? And if God still has to cleanse us and take our sins away at some future point, then Jesus Christ died for no reason, didn't He?