79. Is Israel The Chosen People Of God?

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf.

This is episode 79, Is Israel Still the Chosen People of God? This Dispensational Moment.

Every time a rocket is launched from Gaza Strip, a dispensationalist gets his wings.

And by wings, I mean like Red Bull, in that he will receive a rather large boost of courage, enough, in fact, to crawl up out of the hole that he's been hiding in for the past few years from the last failed prediction that he had.

And he will do this in order to fill the Internet with a panoply of reasons why the end times are really now and why what you're seeing happening right before your very eyes in this Palestinian Hamas conflict is a matter of eschatology.

Now, this confusion is entirely unhelpful, to say the least, and it could have been cleared up if our young dispensationalist would have read the former 28 articles that I've written on our blog or the podcast episodes that I've done on eschatology where we seriously engaged the topic.

But shameless plug aside, I've also lately seen a litany of social media posts proclaiming solidarity with Israel in their current war because they're God's chosen people and we don't want to be on the wrong side with God, because, you know, if we bless Israel, then we're going to be blessed.

If we curse Israel, then we're going to be cursed.

And I've just seen so much confusion, both from an eschatological standpoint and also from a status standpoint.

Who is Israel? What's their current status with God? Well, for this reason, I wanted to push a pause on our current series in the eschatology of acts, and I wanted to address this topic head on.

To do that, there's perhaps no better place for us to go than to look at what the word Israel actually means.

From scripture, the very first time that the word is used is when God wrestles with Jacob.

Then he renames Jacob Israel, which means the one who wrestles with God.

Knowing this, it is actually obvious that the word Israel is not a genetic term that is passed down through the bloodlines of families in the same way that Egyptians pass along their lineage.

But to be a member of Israel was actually a spiritual activity.

It was an activity of knowing God and wrestling with him in intimate fellowship, not just merely inheriting the right DNA.

And we know this is true because God calls all kinds of ethnic peoples Israel.

For instance, when the Israelites leave the land of Egypt, escaping from slavery to be the free people serving their covenant God, the text tells us that a mixed multitude went out with them.

That's Exodus 1238.

Apparently, there was a contingency of Egyptians who were so impressed with the power and the work of Yahweh that they abandoned the empire of the pharaohs and joined themselves with national Israel, becoming followers of Jehovah.

Just like the ethnic born sons of Abraham, these Egyptians were from that moment forward accounted as true Israel.

Moses himself also reiterates this, that Israel was not a lineage status, but it was a spiritual distinction when he admonishes the people to circumcise their hearts, Deuteronomy 10, 16.

You see, all of the men of Israel had performed the physical sign of circumcision upon their physical genitalia, but there were many of them who were not true Israel in the heart, Romans 9, 6.

This is because being a member of true Israel was never about biology or physicality, but it was a spiritual distinction that indicated allegiance to Yahweh.

Now thinking about the lineage of Christ, this makes itself perfectly clear, especially when we look at the genealogies that are recorded in the gospels.

For instance, we can ascertain from Jesus's genealogies that Ruth, the Moabite was a part of his lineage and she was grafted into Israel.

Along with Ruth, you have Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, was a part of his line as well.

You can also see Bathsheba, who is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and she could have herself been a Hittite.

The text is not really clear.

Regardless, the servant of the Lord whom Isaiah calls true Israel, that's Jesus, was the one who assimilated people who were far off, foreigners to the covenant promises of God, and he brought them in the Old Testament into his people as one people.

That is why Paul says that there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ, Galatians 3.28, because all are one in Christ.

We're made one through his finished work, Ephesians 2.14-16, in order that we would become children of Abraham by faith, Galatians 3.29.

And having been made children of Abraham, we're also made into a brand new nation called the Israel of God, which includes slaves and free, male and female, Jews and Gentiles unlike as one unified people under God, that's Galatians 6.16.

Thus, when we speak about the chosen people of God, we're not talking about the biological Jews who have assembled themselves in modern-day Palestine.

We are not theologically weighing in on the modern-day conflict over land and tribal allotments, and we are not weighing in on this particular war.

We refer, when we refer to Israel, we're talking about everyone who is in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Those are the ones who are true Israel.

Furthermore, that distinction, chosen people, is actually more appropriately given to the church who God has made into a kingdom of priests in a holy nation for his purposes.

That's 1 Peter 2.9.

So that if God has a particular people in a particular nation that he has favored, it is the church of Jesus Christ, both Old and New Testament.

So because of this, we must, as Christians, not assign a special or a kind of mystical status to the modern-day secular state of Israel.

They are people, just like every other people on earth, who needs to repent of their sins and turn to Jesus Christ.

If on Judgment Day, if that were today, all who reject Jesus, both Jews and Greeks, would be won in hell, delivered over to the wrath of God for rejecting his Son.

And while the New Testament does allude to a national revival that's going to happen to the people of Israel in the future, Romans 11, that is not through politics, that is not through alliances or treaties, that revival is sparked solely and squarely on the fact that one day in the future, Israel is going to abandon her secularism, she's going to leave her paganism and her idolatry behind, and she is going to bow the knee to King Jesus.

I share all of this today because there is nothing covenantally or spiritually significant about modern-day Israel.

Israel, sure, they're people who are made in God's image, and for that, we bless them.

But we do not expect any unique blessings on our American people just because we have an alliance with Israel, and we don't make excuses for when they sin, and we don't overlook the wickedness that has happened in this conflict on both sides.

Now I will say politically, as an American, I do believe that Israel is an expedient ally in the Middle East, and from that standpoint, that's a good thing.

But from a covenantal standpoint, modern-day Israel does not have God's unique covenantal favor resting upon them in any unique sense.

They are the branch that was cut off from the tree.

We are the branch that the Lord by His pure grace has grafted in, and if we side with them in this war, we will not be more blessed because of it.

Instead, modern-day Israel is a people that we must pray for, a people that we must evangelize with the true gospel, and a people that we will interlock hands with in glory, shouting together in the resurrection, singing the praises of our great King right alongside of them.

So when you think about this, when you think about the current war that's happening over in Israel, pray for them.

Pray that this situation will be the kind of thing that causes national repentance and would cause men, women, and children to turn to Christ.

Do not forget, and this is really important, that there are Christians on both sides, and as Christians, you and I have more in common with a Palestinian Christian than with a secular democratic Jew.

So with that, thank you so much for tuning in this week to the broadcast.

Pray without ceasing.

May the Lord Himself bring perfect peace to this situation, and until next time, God richly bless you.