Why Israel? 🇮🇱
The question of why Israel, especially during times of war, has come up frequently in my conversations with friends and family. The answer, in one word, is ‘obedience’ – I choose to live my life according to the Spirit and simply ask the Father, “What pleases you?” “What do you desire?” As I was spending time with Him a few weeks back, I felt Him begin to download His heart into mine for Israel. These are His chosen people, His original plan; He’s never stopped loving them – His heart is for all mankind, and yet there is a deep, covenantal relationship with this nation. There’s history. It is through the Israelites that the first covenant was bestowed, and the promise of a messiah, a true king, was given. It’s through Jesus, a Jewish man, that we are offered everlasting life – Jesus is not any ordinary man but the Son of God embodied in flesh and bone who became King of kings, conquering sin and death once for all time. His life has become my life, and His life took place in Israel. This is where the messiah chose to take on flesh and outwork the will of God the Father, to establish a new and better covenant through His own precious blood, to pay the price for our sins and redeem and ransom us from death into life, His glorious life. It is on these mountains and in these valleys that our hope for all of humanity walked and taught. It is here.
We know from scripture that the Lord is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) That in His sovereignty and in His generosity, He has included the outsider and foreigner into His plan of redemption, but it began first with the nation and people of Israel. Paul writes, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16) In order to understand what someone like myself, a ‘Gentile’ or outsider, is being included into, we must have some idea of the context and history that led us to this point. What are we being grafted into? What kind of story is this?
The New Testament book of Hebrews is one of my favorites. It unpacks the first covenant and then proceeds to detail the introduction of the 2nd covenant, which is actually a fulfillment of the 1st. It’s a setup and conclusion to the same story. But jumping into a story that’s been playing out for the past few thousand years can be confusing without the recap and key points. It’s necessary for the outsider (anyone who’s not a Hebrew) to grasp the origins of God’s story, and it’s essential for those born into this rich legacy to understand the total fulfillment of God’s promises in Jesus.
My aim is to provide an introduction and some insights into this incredible story that we find ourselves in from ground zero, where so much of it transpired, to articulate what’s necessary to see this through God’s eyes, according to the Bible.
