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Israel - Wordsmatter Series
91 Plays1 year ago
Do the biblical promises God made to ancient Israel apply to the modern nation state that goes by the same name? Was its formation in 1948 a fulfillment of prophecy? Believing so, many evangelicals have fervently supported the state of Israel, sometimes in ways that aren’t consistent with the ethics of Jesus. In this episode Nick and Matt take a look at the idea of Israel according to the Bible, trying to splice out what the word actually means, and offering some clarifying reflections on the relationship between the modern state Israel, the Israel of God’s promises, and the Jesus community.
Interlude Music: Domentum by Of Water, Dreamed of This by Dream Cave
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, welcome to the Repaired Eye podcast. Today is another Words Matter episode on Israel. There's a lot of confusion in Christian theology about the meaning of the biblical word Israel, and this leads to confusion about the role of the state of Israel, which then leads to further confusion about the ethics of Jesus in this world. We'd invite you to imbibe this conversation with an open mind. Enjoy the conversation on Israel.
Modern vs Biblical Israel: Clarification
00:00:27
Speaker
Matt, Israel is always in the news, you know, especially over the last seven months or so. And a lot of the stuff I'm saying on YouTube is, I think, completely wild and kind of unhinged. And I think I know part of the reason why, at least from Christian evangelicals. American evangelical Christians are really confused, I think, about the meaning of the term Israel. We read it in the Bible, of course, you know, we see Israel everywhere. We look in the modern day land of Palestine and we see a state called Israel. So it's really easy to lazily think that the modern state of Israel is this exact same thing as biblical Israel. But not wanting to bury the leader or anything, I would contend it's adamantly not the exact same thing.
Church and Jewish People: Theological Connections
00:01:09
Speaker
There's a copious body of published literature discussing the theological relationship between the Christian church and the Jewish people. Usually this discussion goes something like, what's the relationship between the church and Israel? You'll read this in theological textbooks all the time. And since our last episode was talking about the church, I was like, what better time to talk about Israel? Yeah, it's definitely a conversation that I've heard in churches and in lots of discussions. Because like you said, it's very relevant both to what we read in Scripture and then feels very relevant to what's going on in the world today. And it's obvious why that became a question. Questions adjacent to that became pressing for Christians, and it's because Christians inherit the Hebrew Bible as well as the New Testament. The Hebrew Bible was obviously for the Jewish people, right? And by the Jewish people. And so we've inherited, we think, the Jewish tradition. So the view that the church replaces Israel as God's chosen and blessed people is sometimes called supersessionism.
00:02:03
Speaker
in theology, I think it'll become clear, but this is not the same thing as identifying the church as Israel or as the Jewish people. I'm going to argue that these shouldn't be conflated, but that it's actually proper and correct theologically to view followers of Jesus as the natural culmination and continuation of the Jewish hope as expressed in the promises made to Abraham in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17. And maybe you are listening to this and you don't think any of this matters, as if it's some sort of in-house, abstract debate within Christian theology. But I can't think of a more pressing time to really think about the Christian community's relationship to the Jewish people, or what we call Israel, and the promises that Yahweh made to ancient Israel.
Supersessionism and Christian-Jewish Continuity
00:02:48
Speaker
Explain to me one more time the difference between supersessionism and what you're describing.
00:02:52
Speaker
So that super sessionist idea, it's popularly defined as like the church replaces Israel, or like the promises to Israel are now fulfilled in the church in the followers of Jesus Messiah, as if like the church took over those promises and receive them, and they were going to go to, you know, the Jewish people and now well, surprise, surprise, it's actually the church or followers of Jesus that receive those promises. So they, in effect, replace Israel. I don't think that's like a helpful way to think about what Christianity is or what following Jesus of Nazareth is. I think there's a much more organic connection between the community that follows Jesus and the lineage and the history and the covenants that came before that. I mean, we think that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, that he's the Jewish King. I worship and serve and bow down to every day the King of the Jews.
00:03:42
Speaker
who I think is also the king of the world, right? And this is where we get into questions of like, well, should we define Christianity as a separate religion or should we, like the Messianic Jews, maybe define ourselves as Jews that follow Jesus? And that's a very lively debate. So the difference there is in supersessionism, the promises are taken from the Jews and given to Christians. Whereas what you're proposing is that Christians are kind of grafted into that story and the promises for the Jews. Yeah, and I think that's what Paul is arguing. That there's an expansiveness to the promises that the Jews do receive their promises, do receive their king. But also, so do other people, because God's gracious and includes and expands those promises. not to take anything away, but to simply fulfill actually what I see to be the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises, that his lineage would bless not only his lineage, but it would also bless the entire earth again. It is the fulfillment of the biblical story. Okay, great.
00:04:39
Speaker
So we got to be crystal clear about some definitions, though. The word church has multiple definitions in English, as we talked about last time, right? Like, you know, it could refer to a building structure, like go to the church or to a denomination or other nonprofit organization like the Catholic Church, you know, First Presbyterian Church of this or whatever. It could refer to a time and place of a gathering as in like, let's go to church or more broadly to the people in our region who follow Jesus, what we sometimes call the local church. Or, you know, sometimes even like it could refer to everyone in the world who follows Jesus, the church, the universal church, or what was classically called the Catholic Church. So far as I can tell, only maybe the last three definitions are really biblical ones that would have been used by like Paul and the apostles in the New Testament.
Defining 'Israel' Historically and Biblically
00:05:26
Speaker
The first two are basically just modern usages without any biblical warrant, I think, like we talked about last week, I'd refer you back to that conversation on ecclesia. It's equally important, though, to define Israel.
00:05:38
Speaker
Sometimes this is missed and we really need to park here. Again, there's several ways that people seem to use this word. You know, sometimes it's used to refer to the modern political nation state on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. Sometimes it's used to refer to the ancient political state in the same region under the Davidic monarchy. Sometimes, it is used to refer to ethnic Jews, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Or sometimes still, only the faithful the descendants of Jacob are considered Israel, as Paul would say in Romans 9. Sure. Or that idea of remnant that you see throughout the Old Testament. Yeah, exactly.
00:06:12
Speaker
An added layer of confusion here, I think, is that the term Jew commonly has two meanings, an ethnic descendant of Jacob and or a follower of the Torah, Tanakh, and the rabbinic tradition, those who practice Judaism, whether or not they're ethnically Jews. Sure. Yeah. yeah So i mean this could be confusing because I literally just gave you like five, six, seven different ways that these terms are used. And obviously, a lot of these are definitions that the biblical authors can't possibly have had in mind. They were not thinking about our modern nation state of Israel because it didn't exist. Right, right. Well, exactly. So these are our definitions, our realities that we are grappling with, but not all of these definitions are like used by the biblical author, for example.
00:06:55
Speaker
And for that reason, I think we need to consciously restrict ourselves to the biblical usages if we're trying to figure out what the Bible means. Because otherwise, we'll be just left answering questions that the biblical writers never envisaged. We'll be having them answer our questions, which they weren't trying to answer. And I think that's actually really disrespectful to the intent of the biblical authors, as we've talked about ad nauseam on this podcast, particularly in our first series on how to read the Bible. So by inference, I think we need to ensure that we are precisely not speaking about the modern nation states when we read Israel in the Bible. Like you said, it wasn't on the mind of the author. Modern nation states come and go. And there's no reason to think that the modern state of Israel will be around any longer than any other nation state in the world. Besides, the modern state of Israel is not technically an ethnic state or even a religious state.
00:07:50
Speaker
One doesn't need to be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or be a follower of Torah or Judaism to be a citizen. So it's not accurate to conflate the modern secular state of Israel with any particular promises God made to Abraham's descendants, I don't think, or to the faithful followers of the covenants in the Torah. To conflate these concepts, I think is to compare apples to oranges. So just to be clear, when we have this discussion about what does the Bible say about the church's relationship with Israel, when I use the term Israel in that context, I am explicitly not referring to the modern state of Israel.
00:08:25
Speaker
I'm thinking of what the biblical authors would have been thinking of, which is maybe primarily an ethnic group, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also and including the followers of the Torah, followers of Judaism, we would say, in modern parlance. So I'll try to make it clear by just saying ancient Israel. Okay. In 1948, if they had just called that newly formed nation state something else, would that have solved a lot of our issues? 100% it would have. With these delineations in mind, let's move to the crux of the theological issue of the church's relationship with Israel, ancient Israel.
God's Plan for Ethnic Jews: Special or Unified?
00:08:57
Speaker
I think one of the best ways to instigate the discussion is to ask this question, does God have a special plan for ethnic or religious Jews today that is distinct from his plan for the followers of Jesus?
00:09:09
Speaker
This is the question that lands one in like the dispensationalist camp or like the reformed covenant camp, like all these different theological schools or ways of thinking about the biblical story. And so it's a really important question. And when we ask it in this way, the question forces us to confront a dilemma, I think. The first part of the dilemma is, if we affirm that God does not have a special plan for ethnic or religious Jews, then haven't many of his promises to them just failed? But then the second part of the dilemma is, if we affirm that God does have a plan, a special plan for Jews apart from their following of Jesus, their Messiah, then are we affirming that there's a way to salvation and restoration apart from belief in Jesus of Nazareth? Because that'd be an odd thing to affirm as a Christian as well.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like a tricky knot to untie. I think so. So let's talk about the first prong of that dilemma first. If it is the case that God no longer has a special plan for the Jewish people, then it would seem that many of his promises to them in the Hebrew Bible are regarding a restored kingdom of glory after the exile, it would seem that these promises have just failed, at least to date. If we read Jeremiah 31, starting in verse 31, God promises on his own character that the city of Jerusalem will be rebuilt for Yahweh, it will not be uprooted, and it will not be overthrown again forever. In verses 35 through 37, he banks on this promise by saying this.
00:10:36
Speaker
The Lord has made a promise to Israel. He promises it as the one who fixed the sun to give light by day and the moon and stars to give light by night. He promises it as the one who stirs up the sea so that its waves roll. He promises it as the one who is known as the Lord who rules overall. The Lord affirms, the descendants of Israel will not cease forever to be a nation in my sight. That could only happen if the fixed ordering of the heavenly lights were to cease to operate before me. The Lord says, I will not reject all the descendants of Israel because of all that they have done. That could only happen if the heavens above could be measured or the foundations of the earth below could all be explored, says the Lord. The obvious meaning of these rhetorical statements is that God will never abandon his promises.
00:11:17
Speaker
We now have the James Webb Space Telescope orbiting the sun a million miles from the Earth, taking jaw-dropping visual field and even infrared photos, revealing the vast depths of space, and we still can't adequately or even possibly measure the universe. But it seems that these promises for a great kingdom to come haven't ever really been realized. Before this prophecy in Jeremiah, the original promise to Abraham and his descendants was, I guess, like almost fulfilled in the Davidic Solomonic reigns, but they never really quite took possession of all the land allotted to them in Genesis 15, Joshua 1, and their kingdom deteriorated just as quickly as it arose in 1 Kings 11, David's sin, and the results following that.
00:12:02
Speaker
After the eventual exile in Babylon and even after a partial return to the land, the kingdom never returned to its former glory, and it never possessed the land originally promised to Abraham in full. So it would seem that God's promises failed. This is obviously not possible though. If God is who we say he is, who we believe him to be, it seems that there must be some future plan then for Israel, right? Yeah, its God's going to keep his promises. That seems to be the obvious conclusion. And this is the basic premise of the popular kind of American theological system called dispensationalism.
00:12:36
Speaker
But this leads to an awkward problem then, if you're a Christian. If God does have a unique plan for Israel in the future, stuff that hasn't been realized yet, then what does this plan consist of? We know that Jesus affirmed his kingdom had been inaugurated and that he would return to consummate his kingdom in the future. The culminating kingdom of God at Jesus' return and the restoration of all things and the new creation, this was the constant hope for the early Christians. Just read Revelation 21 and 22, the end of the Bible. the future kingdom will
Jesus: Fulfillment of Jewish Hopes
00:13:07
Speaker
return the story of the Bible to its beginning. But how exactly does this fit into the promises that God made to the Jews? Of course, the New Testament authors basically argue that followers of Jesus are the ones who will partake in that future kingdom to come. Not just like Jews by virtue of being ethnic or religious Jews. The New Testament authors would argue that Jews can and will participate in the future world if they follow Jesus. You know, they themselves were Jews.
00:13:36
Speaker
But this would mean that there's actually no unique hope for just ethnic or religious Jews that is different from the hope that runs through Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, the only way for Jews or anyone to the blessing of the new world is through belief and in following the Jewish Messiah whom we affirm to be Jesus of Nazareth. But when Jews accept Jesus, then they are part of the Jesus community, which would then undermine the claim that there's a separate hope for Jews apart from, I guess, what we'd call the Christian hope, the one that runs through Jesus. So it seems that neither of these options is really feasible.
00:14:13
Speaker
Would people argue that this separate hope for Jewish people is a hope that God will bring them into inclusion with Jesus people? Like there's a separate hope for Jewish non-believers of Jesus that Gentile non-believers of Jesus don't necessarily have. that is believed to be the case by some folks kind of in that dispensationalist camp. I don't believe that's the case because I do think that Jesus is the supreme authority, the king, and that all human salvation and restoration runs through Jesus.
00:14:44
Speaker
I don't think we should be looking for really like any type of restoration of hope in the now or in the future, apart from running that through Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, yeah, that's not what I'm saying. I guess in my mind, if you're gonna say, okay, God has made special plans to Israel, and the only hope for anybody is through Jesus, isn't it possible that that separate hope for the Jewish people is a hope that God will then bring them into the kingdom of Jesus? Oh, of course, that they'll basically be converted to follow their Messiah, Jesus. Yeah, of course. There's ah a wide range of theological views that actually accept that something like that would happen, that there will basically be a mass, a massive revival, let's say.
00:15:26
Speaker
of you know ethnic and religious Jews who will accept Jesus as their king. Whether or not you want to call that coming into Christianity or you want to call that Messianic Judaism or something like that, the verbiage doesn't matter to me. But yeah, I mean, I've heard reformed folks talk about that after the time of the Gentiles, as Paul would say, that there will be a mass repentance of the Jewish people and they'll come and follow Jesus, their king, and and be part of the Jesus community. And then obviously, that's a prevalent theme in dispensationalism as well. But yeah, I think there's a lot of theologians that would say something like that would happen. If God does have a special place or special plan for an ethnic group, the Jews, that that plan would be realized through their conversion and following Jesus, their king.
00:16:12
Speaker
And I don't have any particular objections to that. I think you could see something like that in Paul in the book of Romans. I mean, my hope is that not only all the Jews, but all the peoples of the world come to follow and know Jesus of Nazareth and that we are all restored in him in the new world to God. Hallelujah.
00:16:44
Speaker
So again, back to the question. What is the relationship between the followers of Jesus and the descendants of Jacob who don't necessarily follow Jesus? In other words, what's the relationship between the church and Israel as commonly stated? I think a few things can really help us solve the confusion that hopefully we've created in the conversation so far. The first thing is this, so the church and Israel are not the same thing. I don't think it's helpful to equate them. Even though, like we talked about in our last podcast, that in the Septuagint, the community of Israelites was called the Equatia, so also was the community of Jesus.
00:17:19
Speaker
In the way we use those words today, I don't think it's helpful to be like, oh, the church in Israel, same thing. That kind of just sounds super sessionist, in my opinion, and that's just not a helpful way of conceptualizing the relationship between, I guess, the Christian religion and the Jewish faith.
Church vs Ancient Israel: Belief and Ethnicity
00:17:33
Speaker
Like I said, sometimes people in the reformed or covenantal type of tradition will kind of equate those terms or it seems like that in their writings, but I just, I don't really find it that helpful. The church is by definition made up of people who acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as the supreme authority, as the Messiah, the king of the Jews and the king of the world. ah Regardless of their ethnicity, Jews, Romans, barbarians, Americans, the church is not ethnocentric. It's diverse and it's made up of anyone who calls in the name of Yahweh as Joel two would say and as Paul echoes in Romans 10. On the other hand, ancient Israel is primarily an ethnic group along with the religious tradition that that group inherited.
00:18:12
Speaker
ah porous ethnic group. Sure. The church is not at all, though, defined by common ancestry, but rather by a common affirmation. Kind of one of the distinguishing features of the church. Yeah. Whereas I don't think that's quite true. If we're talking about ancient Israelites, they they would have been defined somewhat by a common ancestry. We're descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. So again, these are two different ideas. So I don't think we should conflate them. So that was my first point to kind of clear things up. Secondly though, God hasn't and He won't fail to keep His promises made to the descendants of Jacob. However, according to the New Testament authors, He will not fulfill those promises by any other means than through Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus as the King of Israel, as Mark 15 says, He kept the covenant that the rest of ancient Israel couldn't keep.
00:19:02
Speaker
As their representative ruler, he delivered more than the promises made to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He inaugurated a kingdom that not only extended to the boundaries of ancient Canaan, but also to the entire world. The kingdom has already spread well beyond the banks of the Promised Land. And in the eternal kingdom, when all nations are gathered before him, you know, bringing tribute to the New Jerusalem, like Isaiah 66 describes, it will become evident to everyone that not one word of all of his good promises have failed. 1 Kings 856. Even in the here and now, we have a real taste of that eternal kingdom. We can see and observe that all God's promises find their yes in Jesus. 2 Corinthians 1.20. What this means is that Messiah Jesus of Nazareth already has delivered the kingdom back to Israel. And this reality will be made evident ultimately in the resurrection in the new world.
00:19:59
Speaker
So none of God's promises to ancient Israel have failed. The New Testament authors urge us to simply view these promises in light of King Jesus, as did the apostles. And when we do that, the plan of God to bring blessing back to the nations through the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob line, the Jewish line, that makes sense, and it finds its fulfillment in the bringing forth of Jesus, the Jewish King whom Christians worship. So when you look at some of the Old Testament promises to Israel, something pretty specific around land or other aspects of the kingdom, you're seeing those promises as fulfilled to the Jewish people in Jesus. And then are those promises expanded so that non-ethnically Jewish people can come in and participate in the fulfillment of those promises?
00:20:45
Speaker
Or are you suggesting that those people coming in are then somehow a fulfillment of those promises to Israel as well? Can you kind of spell out those steps for me? Maybe I'm getting way too detailed. Well, I'm not sure 100% how to speak in concrete terms of the specific promises made and then of the prophetic hopes that we see in Isaiah, and Ezekiel, ah Jeremiah, the rest of the prophets for the restoration of all things. But I guess in general terms, I see an expansiveness to the promises that God made to Abraham and his descendants that they would bring blessing to the world. I see then the Israelite story, the descendants of Jacob, the promises God made to them at Sinai, the promises of land, that specific land.
00:21:29
Speaker
I see that promise as only expanding to lands far beyond just that specific land, so that the Jews inherit not only that land, but the whole world. And they inherit that through the King who sits as the Lord and the King of all right now, Jesus of Nazareth, and that that lordship and that kingship that Jesus has as the Jewish King. isn't just like some theoretical abstract idea, but will actually be realized and seen and felt in all the earth in the new world to come. Not only that, but participation in that eternal kingdom that not only was certainly yes over all the banks of ancient Canaan land, but over all the earth, participation in that kingdom was offered first to the Jews.
00:22:15
Speaker
All of Jesus' first disciples were Jews. The apostles are all Jews, some of them very devout. You think of Paul, who is trained by Gamaliel, zealous for the law of God. So I mean, these were the recipients. These are the first recipients of the kingdom of Messiah Jesus. And in fact, the Jesus communities were all Jewish at first. Obviously, Paul had a big role in expanding those communities and inviting non-ethnic or religious Jews to participate in those Jesus communities too. He called himself the apostle to the nations or Gentiles. This is what the Latin church tradition has gotten so wrong. There is nothing about the kingdom of Jesus that is anti-Jew or like against Jew or exclusionary to the Jews.
00:23:02
Speaker
It's a sad reality of the Latin Western church tradition that there's been so much anti-Semitism, you know, this idea that, you know, they killed Jesus and that therefore they as a race are cursed or something like that. Just this ridiculous and horrible idea that isn't faithful. yeah It definitely seems very strange when you re-understand that story as the Jewish story with the Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of promises to the Jewish people, and then the great moment of celebration when Gentiles get to come in and participate in the fulfillment of those promises. It seems super weird that all of a sudden to turn around and be bashing on Jewish people. yeah
00:23:37
Speaker
And that's just historically the case that that has happened. And it's a sad reality. I mean, I see myself as an inheritor of this Jewish history worldview, I guess. And I'm thankful for that. And I also see myself as part of the people who at Jesus's time would have been called the ethnae in Greek or the goim in Hebrew. Those people, the nations out there. That's, I mean, that's me. And I got to be included in the Israelite story and the Jewish story. And I get to worship and serve and follow. the Jewish king. I have nothing but affection for the Jewish people, the Jewish tradition, and Judaism as a system of belief that follows Torah. I realize they predominantly disagree with me and you that Jesus is their Messiah, their king, and that just is what it is, but no disrespect to the tradition.
00:24:27
Speaker
Okay, a third clarifying point then. If all of the promises that God made to ancient Israel about her future are fulfilled in her Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, as Paul argued, then there aren't any promises to be fulfilled that bypass Jesus. In other words, there's no promise of a future kingdom for an ethnic Israel apart from their belief in Messiah Jesus. There's no promise God needs to fulfill to the Jewish people apart from the promises that Jesus followers, whether Jews or Gentiles, have inherited through their king.
00:25:01
Speaker
I really think people maybe get confused about this point. We shouldn't think that the modern state of Israel is somehow a precursor to the kingdom to come, or even that it necessarily is sanctioned by God, or that it is a fulfillment of any of his promises. God's promises to ancient Israel consistently hinged on covenant obedience, and ultimately the Apostle's radical claim was that the greatest way to show covenant obedience was to receive Jesus as Israel's Messiah, as her king, and to not do so is covenant disobedience. Peter in his preaching
00:25:38
Speaker
says, repent to a bunch of religious Jews, followers of Torah. And he says, turn around, change your mind about Jesus. The modern state of Israel has nothing to do with this blessing, I don't think. It's a secular state. It doesn't recognize Jesus as the Messiah and King at all. and It doesn't even attempt to. It doesn't even try to follow Torah or to keep the ancient covenant stipulations as outlined in Deuteronomy, for example. This doesn't mean that we need to be hostile to the state of Israel or something like that, but it does mean that we should treat it like we do any other secular power, applauding it when it does right and confronting it and criticizing it when it does wrong. I don't think there's any Christian justification for a God-ordained secular Zionism.
00:26:27
Speaker
Every government will be crushed by the rule of Jesus at his return. This means the United States government and the United States president, the government and the prime minister of the modern state of Israel. If they don't acknowledge Jesus' kingship, they'll be crushed, as all the other powers of the world will be crushed when Jesus establishes his rule in the eternal kingdom, the renewed earth. So there's not any specific America hate or modern state of Israel hate going on here. I just think we can view nations, all nations, including ours and including the state of Israel as we do any other secular state. And the last clarifying point I would make is that there is no advantage to being of any particular ethnic group in the kingdom of God.
00:27:13
Speaker
God's promises have been ever expanding since the covenant that God made with Abraham. His plan was always to bring the blessing of Eden to the world again, and He chose to do so through the seed of Abraham. That's what the election of Israel is all about in Paul's discussion in Romans 9-11. God's plan ultimately found its expansive promises fulfilled in Jesus and the Acts of the Apostles so that all the nations and ethnicities were welcomed and still are welcomed into the new covenant. If there is any restriction, again, of God's promises back to just a particular people group, in my opinion, this wouldn't be anything but ethnic partiality, which is against James that God shows no partiality. In other words, you could call this racism or ethnocentrism.
00:28:01
Speaker
The Apostle Peter famously recognizes this, as told in Acts 10, that God shows no partiality. His plan was always to bless the many. 3-1, Genesis 12-3. And God has done so. Galatians 3, 14. Any funneling of this blessing that went out to all, back to just the one again, after it's been extended out, I think has been an appropriate and incorrect way of viewing the scriptural story. And I don't think it actually comprehends and appreciates the Abrahamic promise or the biblical story in general. To be crystal clear about this point though, the Jews were and are God's elected people. They were chosen to bring the blessing of Eden back to humanity after our falling away. Through their Messiah, the representative ruler, they have done so.
00:28:48
Speaker
And the kingdom was and is offered to them first. Jesus is the king of the Jews and the king of the world. He'll always be a Jew. And in that way, the promise to Abraham that his throne would be established forever, as stated in 2 Samuel 7, that's fulfilled.
00:29:17
Speaker
So when you say that the Jews were and are God's chosen people, what does it mean to say that they are God's chosen people now? In the sense that if they trace their lineage back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it is that lineage that brought forth the blessing to the nations. It is that lineage that inherited the Torah, Hebrew Bible, and in that sense, they share a connection with Jesus of Nazareth that I'll never have. So when you call Jewish people God's chosen people today, you are saying that looking back in time towards Jesus and that He came as the Jewish Messiah
Inclusive Divine Lineage through Jesus
00:29:49
Speaker
to fulfill those promises. You're not looking out into the world today and saying, oh, there's some special fulfillment for them as God's chosen people.
00:29:57
Speaker
I don't think I typically refer to Jews as God's chosen people now. It's not incorrect to say that. If they share lineage with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then they are just historically factually part of the same lineage that God elected to bring the blessing to the nations. So in that sense, they're God's chosen people, and still part of that, I guess, lineage. And certainly followers of Judaism, whether or not they're ethnically Jewish, or even I think messianic Jews or Christians who inherit that tradition and who would very much claim the Jewish story, the Hebrew Bible, as their own story. I mean, now we're starting to blur the lines between like God's people and not God's people, etc, etc. And of course, Christians kind of re-paradigm that all through whoever follows Jesus, those are God's people.
00:30:41
Speaker
I mean, so it all kind of gets like messy when you start to think about
New Testament Teachings on Salvation
00:30:44
Speaker
it. But one thing I would say with clarity is, yeah, according to the New Testament, there's not a separate plan for a people group that bypasses Jesus. If you're ethnically Irish, you don't have like some special favor from God and you will get some type of temporal blessings in the here and now apart from following Jesus and receiving the kingdom of God now and in the future. Not even for Norwegians? not even for Norwegians, and not even for ethnic Jews. Again, to not follow Jesus of Nazareth is to not accept the king of the Jews and the king of the world. And to not accept the king of the Jews and the king of the world is to leave yourself outside of that kingdom, quite obviously. And so the inheritors of the kingdom of God are those who accept the king of the Jews and the king of the world.
00:31:32
Speaker
Circling back around to something you commented on at the beginning, you know, maybe it is the case that God has a very particular plan for ethnic or religious Jews in the future. But if that is the case, then it would be for, like I said, mass revival, mass repentance, back to faithfulness, to the covenant, and to the new covenant, and to Messiah King Jesus.
Prophecy and Jewish Acceptance of Jesus
00:31:56
Speaker
So when we're looking out at the world today, if someone's going to say, oh look, something going on with ethnically Jewish people today is fulfillment of prophecy, that would be kind of the litmus test you would use. Like, ah, in order for it to be fulfillment of prophecy, it has to be about people coming to Jesus.
00:32:13
Speaker
I think so. As a Christian, obviously, that's my perspective. But I would also say this too. You know, maybe there is an interesting conversation if you saw a mass revival of Jewish people to actually trying to follow Torah, let's say. Maybe that would be interesting and maybe that would be a work of God or something. Perhaps we could have that conversation then.
Covenant Stipulations and Modern Israel
00:32:31
Speaker
But like I said, the modern state of Israel is not trying to be a religious state. They're not trying to follow Torah or the Covenant stipulations. In fact, if they were, they would be in bad shape. Because Deuteronomy 28 and 29 spells out the blessings for obedience to the Covenant and the Covenant stipulations, what we often in Protestantism call law. It's more like stipulations or guidelines, but... There's blessings for obeying those and curses for disobeying those. And there's a whole lot in every country, including the modern state of Israel, that is just very contrary to the heart of the Torah. And we can get into specifics if we want to. I don't mean to like criticize the state of Israel any more than any other nation state in the world that is unjust and does wicked things.
00:33:14
Speaker
But if the modern state of Israel somehow did fulfill that role of being God's fulfilled promise to the Jews, then the modern state of Israel would be trying to be faithful to the covenant. Or if you think about it in reverse, if you want to look for the blessing of covenant obedience as outlined in Deuteronomy 28, you would look for a people, group, nation, you know some type of organization that was keeping Torah and being faithful to it. And that's just speaking on the level of just Jewish obedience, not even bringing in the whole factor of believing that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Insofar as the modern state of Israel is not trying to keep the covenant, the covenant made with Israel at Sinai. They're not trying to follow Torah or even like the rabbinic tradition, per se. People within the country certainly are, you know, but the state itself is not a religious state. Insofar as they're not trying to be faithful to the covenant, they aren't inheritors of the covenant blessings.
00:34:07
Speaker
And insofar as they as a nation state don't accept Jesus as their Lord, we don't expect them or any other nation state to inherit the blessing of the kingdom of God and the resurrection and in the new world to come. So, I mean, I think we can see that this kind of maybe heady discussion about the relationship between the church and Israel parsing out like different definitions of this stuff. You know, it could seem like it doesn't matter, but I really think it does start to matter really quickly. If nothing else, I sincerely hope and I pray that this conversation can help us gain the ability to have ethical clarity as followers of King Jesus. I've noticed Christians in the last few months in particular sounding completely confused and off base, turning good into evil and evil into good. Yes, of course, you know, like the terrorists or Hamas does that too, I'm sure, right?
00:34:58
Speaker
I'm not a Muslim, and I would rather let all the peace-loving Muslims offer their critique in that direction, right? I'll leave that up to them to critique. I am far more interested in critique in my own religion, my own tribe, so to speak.
Critique of Divine Favor Beliefs
00:35:10
Speaker
We Christians need our theology straight enough to have some moral clarity. The notion that the modern state of Israel is somehow the fulfillment of God's special end times plan has made us think that the modern state of Israel is uncriticizable. that to criticize it for its genuine evils is to infuriate God somehow. We think that no matter what, God is on the state of Israel's side in whatever conflict comes to be. And since we think that, we justify atrocities and we turn what King Jesus would call evil into good.
00:35:46
Speaker
This idea I think has aided and abetted the slaughtering of now thousands of innocent people, children, mothers, grandmothers, high school kids, as is always the case in wartime. But it's particularly bothersome when we Christians are raising the war flag in the name of God or Jesus somehow justifying these atrocities. Because we think that there is a secular state, very often we think there's two secular states, the United States and the State of Israel, that cannot be criticized, that cannot be called out for evil. And I think we're just confused on that. And and I hope that maybe parsing out some of these terms and just wading kind of into the theology of the biblical story, I mean, I hope this can clarify a couple things for us.
00:36:33
Speaker
And for whatever other judgments we want to make about the powers of the world and how they interact, you know, whether or not the United States is more or less a just state or whether or not the state of Israel is more or less a just state, those conversations are relevant and good, but none of them have anything to do with God's special ordination of the United States as his special people to enforce democracy in the world or the state of Israel as being the fulfillment of all of God's promises that he made to Abraham. that's mistaken. yeah It does feel just so backwards from the story of the Bible in the Old Testament where God calls his people to a very high ethical standard and then gives clear curses that will fall if they don't live by those ethical standards.
00:37:16
Speaker
And then in the New Testament, Jesus elevates those ethical standards and again calls all of his followers to
Ethical Standards and Biblical Narrative
00:37:21
Speaker
live by them. So to use the modern nation state of Israel as a way of justifying actions that are not in line with either the Old Testament calls to ethical living or Jesus calls to ethical living does seem really contrary to the whole story of the Bible. It's a really great point. And that's why I said something like, the modern state of Israel better hope i hope that God doesn't consider it the reincarnation of the ancient state of Israel. Exactly. Because then he's going to hold it accountable. Well, exactly. Then they would be subject to the curses probably at this time in this place, not the blessings.
00:37:52
Speaker
Again, not to knock on them any more than our country or, you know, other countries that are doing horrible things in the world. Thank God that he doesn't hold America to that standard either. In other words, if you are like kind of a hardcore Israel supporter, they can kind of do no wrong. And that's kind of your default position, which there might be historical reasons why that may be your default position or whatever. But if that is your default position, you better hope and pray that the modern state of Israel has nothing to do with God's promises to the Jews. Because if it does, then to your point, then they would be due for receiving all kinds of covenant curses for the injustice that they have wrought, not only in the last seven months, but pretty messy history over there.
00:38:31
Speaker
you'd expect a new exile event. Well, right. And again, that's not my view. I actually don't think that the state of Israel or the United States of America or any other country has anything to do with like God's particular promises to Abraham. Like like I said, I see all that through a different lens, through the fulfilling in Jesus and all that. But if that kind of is your view, then you should expect judgment, not good, not blessing and not peace right now. Yeah, I mean my heart in all this is God help us to be less lazy in our theology. God help us to see the world through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. God help us to actually think Christianly about warfare, violence, bloodshed, and whatever else the evil powers of the world get up to.
00:39:13
Speaker
When we think Christianly, we will be free to denounce anyone who commits violence against God's image bearers. Whether Hamas or the state of Israel, my earnest prayer is that in the generations to come, history will record Christians as those who sided radically with all who sought peace with their enemies, as Jesus taught, and who stood against the powers of the world who sought hell on their enemies. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.
00:40:25
Speaker
israel and i allahu areran aya Here Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone. maruch shamem cabo mocoto la olam vid And blessed be His glorious name, whose kingdom is forever and ever.