Israel Matters

Like a lot of Christians, I grew up unaware that Israel matters any more, just assuming that God had finished with her, or perhaps even given up on her.  I heard virtually nothing about Israel in my seminary training.  It was apparently no longer relevant to the churches I was going to lead as a young pastor.

But just under 30 years ago, no longer a pastor, I was reading Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Mysteriously, my Bible seemed to expand by three chapters.  Romans 9, 10 and 11.  I hadn’t noticed them before.  When Paul asks in Romans 11:1, “Has God, then rejected His people?” given that the Jewish leadership had rejected Jesus as the Son of God, my mental answer to Paul’s question was “yes”, God had lost patience with them, after centuries of frequent idolatry and unrighteousness.  He gave up on Israel and turned to Plan B, the Church.  Israel was in the dustbin of God’s plans.

To my surprise and amazement, Paul did not answer “Yes, I have rejected my people.” But rather, an emphatic “No – By no means!” “In the first place,” he continues, “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.”   Then Paul alludes to Elijah when God had to tell him that he was not alone but part of a faithful remnant of 7,000 who had not bowed the knee to Ba’al.  Not all the Jews had rejected Jesus. The 12 apostles, of course.  And the 3,000 Jewish visitors to Jerusalem on Pentecost.

Yes, the nation as a whole had missed the hour of her visitation, but that had not changed God’s promises or his covenants or his plans for her.

If God has not rejected Israel, if she is still the chosen people, then where do Gentiles fit in – Gentile believers in Jesus?  Are we second class citizens?  By no means!  In verse 17, Paul speaks of Israel as an olive tree.  Listen carefully: “If some of the branches were broken off, by rejection of Jesus, and you, although a wild olive shoot, you Gentiles, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches.”

According to Paul, there is one people of God, one chosen people, Israel, the olive tree.  When Gentiles put their faith in Jesus, they are grafted in, branches grafted into the trunk of the one olive tree.  This does not mean Gentiles become Jews, as we will discover in a future teaching.  But Jews and Gentiles, with their own distinctiveness, become together the one people of God.  In Ephesians, Paul will describe this people as the one New Man, both reconciled to God in one body through the cross.

Let’s look at the promises and covenants that God made with Israel, and which are still valid and active.  These covenants were made and renewed with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and they are very conveniently summarized in verses 7-11 of Psalm 105:

He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth.

He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded for a thousand generations,

The covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac,

Which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant,

Saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.”

In the Psalm, we hear the words…. forever, for a thousand generations and everlasting.  Sounds pretty permanent! And we also see that the covenant involves the provision of a land, “… the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.” We’ll come back to the land in future teachings.

This question of the place of Israel in the purposes of God is not just a theoretical one…or a theological one. As we look around us, the nation of Israel, and the entire Jewish people, are experiencing levels of hostility, violence and hatred that is staggering them.  Older Jewish people are frequently heard making comparisons between today and the 1930’s, when hatred for the Jewish people of Europe became the driving force of Hitler’s Third Reich.  Most Christians today lament the weak response of the Church to the Holocaust. 

Is it possible that Israel and the Jewish people are hated, not because they are evil, or too rich or too powerful, or because they are colonizers, but because they are God’s chosen people – still in covenant with Him after 4,000 years of serving Him, albeit with a very mixed record?  I believe that Christians today are being called by God to understand the times we are living in, including this tsunami of antisemitism, and to respond as He would ask.

Let’s look at one more Scripture about where Israel stands with God, in the midst of its trial today.  Jeremiah chapter 31.  In verse 3, God says: “Behold, I have loved you with an everlasting love.”  He is speaking to Israel. Jeremiah then speaks of a joyous return of the Jews from exile to the land of Canaan. But listen to how the chapter ends:  “Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the LORD of hosts is his name: If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.”  Has the fixed order of the universe departed from before God?  No.  And so, God says, the offspring of Israel have not and will not cease from being a nation before Him either.

Israel still matters to God.  To see how believers in Jesus are responding to this important reality, check out bridgesforpeace.com.

To be continued…