Have You Not Read S3:E3 - The Conflict in Israel (Part 2)

Introduction to the Podcast and the Question of Israel

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I am Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Chris Giesler.

Michael Durham.

David Kassin.

And we have Andrew in the corner, and he's gonna be helping us out today as well.

It's okay.

It's okay.

So we have a very pointed question that ties back to our previous episode as to how we are to react as Christians to the conflict in Hamas and Israel. And it's not just tangential, but it is kind of at the core of how differing views in Christianity view this conflict.

Michael, would you go ahead.

And kind of flesh out the question itself for us?

Right. So what we wanna do is try to begin to talk about this very important topic without talking about everything at once. So we wanna begin somewhere, and I think a good place to begin is when God made promises to Abraham about blessings and cursings, how is that fulfilled?

And then how does that then control our understanding of the conflict in Israel and Gaza? Genesis 12 is a great place to start. Genesis 12, verses one through three. Okay, Chris, will you read that?

Abraham, the Seed, and the Blessing of the Nations

Now the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country, from your family, and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great.

And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse him who curses you. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So Joshua tells us that Abram was from Ur of the Chaldees, that he was an idolater, and yet God had mercy and grace upon him and called him out of that land. Abram is also a descendant of Eber, since we get the word Hebrew.

He's also a descendant of, like the rest of us, Seth and Noah, more specifically, but he's the son of Shem and Noah. Going all the way back to the promise made in Genesis 3 .15, that a seed would be born of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.

And so we've been tracking that story all the way through Genesis, and we hear about all the nations split up at Babel, chapters 10 and 11 of Genesis. And now, here, we have this wonderful promise that even though the nations are not getting along and they're all confused, and what now, that God will work with Abram and he will make Abram a great nation, which means Abram's going to have a seed, he's going to have offspring, even though he doesn't have any yet, and that nations, all the families of the earth, will be blessed in Abram somehow, some way.

And then we begin to read the saga of Abram, and it's a marvelous story, it's riveting, so many wonderful parts to it. But when we come to Genesis 22, we hear an echo. In Genesis 12, it says, now go to a place that I will show you.

And then there's the promise of offspring and promise of blessing and cursing. Now we come to Genesis chapter 22, and why don't you all read verses one and two for me.

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. Then he said, take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.

Right, and so in the Hebrew, the place I will show you, the place I will tell you, same exact word in the Hebrew. I checked. There's a particular echo going on here. Go to a place that I will show you.

Go to the mountain that I will show you. Both contexts about the promise of a seed, and in both contexts, issue a blessing, all the families or all the nations of the earth. So if you will, one of you will read verse 18 of Genesis 22.

In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.

Right, and then, so how did Abraham obey? What was he, Abraham obey? What was he doing up on that mountain, and how did he obey, and then what happened?

Well, I believe he's gonna offer up his son. Right. As a sacrifice.

Yeah, and he was ready to do it. You know, the scene slows down. Every movement of Abraham is zoomed in on. And he takes the knife, and he lifts the knife. He's about to strike with the knife, and then the angel of the Lord stops him and reveals a ram caught by the thorns in the thicket as a substitute sacrifice.

Therefore, this is the place where the Lord provides. There on Mount Moriah, the place of the future threshing floor of Ariranna that David purchased to offer sacrifices to the Lord to appease the wrath of God where the temple would be built.

So a very, very meaningful, very special moment there in the Old Testament. One that Paul, the apostle, looked back at for particular glory, and the glory is that of Christ. So we go to Galatians chapter three, and he's dealing with questions about what about the promises to Abraham?

What about the law that was given to Moses? How are we to understand these things? Because the Galatians are getting persuaded to bring circumcision and all the law with it into their understanding of the gospel.

And Paul is saying, what are you doing? In a sense, he's saying, have you not read?

That's right.

He goes back and says, let's think about how this actually happened back there in Genesis and Exodus and following, okay? So when we go to Galatians chapter three, we read, let's see, I'm gonna go with

Starting verse six.

Yeah, I think verse six would be a good place to start once you start reading, David.

Sure, through what, nine, or a little bit further along?

I would say nine, and then we'll jump down a little bit.

Roger that. Galatians 3 .6, just as Abraham believed God and was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall the nations be blessed.

So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham. The man of faith.

So we hear, remember Genesis 12, Genesis 22, blessings, blessings, I will bless those who bless you. And the blessings of the families of the earth, the blessing of the nations will be through you and your seed.

And now Paul says in due time, he has arrived and Christ is through whom the blessings come. He's the seed of Abraham. And we read about that in verses 14 through 16.

I'll go and grab that. That the blessings of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak in a manner of men, though it is only a man's covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it.

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, who is Christ.

In other words, Paul is saying that when you go back and you look at the promises that God made to Abraham, it was to Abraham and to his seed, and how are those fulfilled? In his seed, who is Christ. So when we go back to Genesis 12, it's not something that we say, oh, well, we can just throw that away now that it's been fulfilled in Christ, absolutely not.

We read it in the light of Jesus Christ. And so we see that those who bless Christ are blessed and those who curse Christ are cursed. But what about you and I, in that we've sinned against God and we've done things against Jesus, who is the king of the universe.

We've not always done what was right and bowed the knee and blessed him. So what about our curse? Well, I mean, I had you start with verse 14, but what about verse 13?

Yeah, verse 13. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

Well, there it is. There's the hope of all the nations, right? Because all of us have fallen short. All of us have cursed God's seed, his promised son. We did not count him worthy. We didn't bow the knee and the great fear is, oh, I've cursed him, I'll be cursed.

No, he bears our curse on the tree and suffers that for us and takes it away so that we may have all the blessings that God promised to Abraham and his seed by faith in Jesus Christ. So that is why when you read other passages, there is no distinction.

All of sin falls short of the glory of God. There's no distinction now. Righteousness has been manifested apart from the law and the prophets. And now we have our righteousness in Christ, whether we're Jew or we're Gentile, doesn't matter what ethnic background we come from, we are blessed in Christ, all the families of the earth.

Right, the wall of hostility that he talks about in Ephesians, that's torn down?

Correct.

It's torn down by faith because they were made into one being. And here we just read, it says in verse seven, therefore know that only those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham. And Jesus had this discussion with the Jews of his time.

We have Abraham as our father. And he says, if you did, you wouldn't be trying to stone me because Abraham's not your father.

Right, so how are we to understand this? It's not that somehow the church has replaced Israel in the promises of God. And all we need to do is just go back and read the whole Bible. And everywhere we see Israel, we just think to ourselves church or that the church is Israel and so forth.

What we're told is that the promises of God, it doesn't say it was given to Abraham and to all of his spiritual offspring directly. It was to Abraham and to his seed. And if we're in the seed who is Christ, then we have blessing.

So the focus is all on Jesus Christ. He's the focus.

And the promises were always meant for him specifically.

Yes, I think that goes back to a larger picture that Christ as the last Adam, as the second Adam is the image of God. He's the image of the invisible God. And when Adam fell and he sinned before there was any law and he transgressed and he broke faith with his creator and he went against God's design, how God made Adam into his own image.

And after that, God makes a series of covenants in which he begins to restore that image and reveal the coming renewal of that image. And all the covenants that God makes with Noah and Abraham and Israel and David are all in one sense, image of God shaped.

In other sense, they're all Christ shaped because they're ultimately fulfilled in him. And so that's why the hope of all humanity is in Christ because he's the fulfillment of that. Now, when we go to Isaiah 49.

Before we leave Genesis, excuse me, before we leave Galatians three, you said this and I want to make sure that nobody misses this point because I think the argument kind of hinges on this. You say that, continuing on in verse 19, it says, why do we have the law?

Until the offspring should come to whom the promises were made. We keep saying these promises were made to the seed, to Christ. Christ is the one to whom these promises were made. You know that the promise, continuing on, verse 22, the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe for, verse 26, in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

Okay, we're sons of God through faith. Christ is the one to whom the promises were made. Verse 29, he ends this chapter with, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring heirs according to the promise.

So if Christ receives the promise and you're in Christ, you're a joint heir with him. The church doesn't replace Israel, Christ is.

And that's where we're going in Isaiah. And just to see that he has so much weight and glory, he has so much glory that we no longer hyphenate our names. We're just Christians, we're in him. We're not hyphenate our names.

That's what verse 28, Galatians 3 talks about. And we have to believe the plain reading of the text. There is neither Jew nor Greek, okay? It doesn't mean that there are no ethnic Jews. It doesn't mean that there is no ethnic Gentiles.

Of course there are. There is neither slave nor free. There are slaves today who are Christians and there are free men who are Christians. And there's neither male nor female. Male and female still exist, okay?

But what is the point that Paul makes? For you are all one in Christ Jesus. In other words, what is your identity now? Now think about it. Jew nor Greek, that mattered a great deal in the old covenant.

Slave or free, that mattered a great deal in the old covenant. Male or female, females didn't get circumcised. Male or female, that mattered a great deal in the old covenant. But now in the new covenant, we're just Christ's.

We belong to him. You see, everything changes now. And it wasn't that God had to come up with something new because something went wrong, right? What he talked about in the Old Testament was always headed this direction.

You had mentioned, instead of hyphenate, there's no Jew or Greek. They're now one. They're male or female, they're now one. Slave, they're now one. Often in discussions, it sounds like you had the Jews and now you have this second group of people, the church.

There are two people of God. In many discussions now, there's two people of God. But that seems to be saying there is one people of God.

Yeah, the basis of that two peoples of God says there are two peoples of God with two separate promises. And there's a set of physical promises for the Jews and a set of spiritual promises for the church.

But then that would divide up the promise where it says Abraham and his seed. You would have some promises to Abraham and then some promises to the seed, dividing the promise. But it doesn't say that.

It says the promise is to Abraham and his seed.

And to this one, to whom it all actually belongs. And what happens to those who are in that one seed, they are joint heirs with him of those promises. What promises? The one he just got finished talking about earlier in the chapter.

Right.

Right, so let's go to Isaiah 49 because we see how through these latter prophets, the latter prophets are working with all of the covenants by now. When you read in the Bible, by the time you get to 2 Samuel, you have all the covenants that God made, the major covenants where he's revealing the image of God.

And then there's the rest of the Old Testament is simply just expositing on what does that look like and anticipating the coming of the Messiah. So when we get to Isaiah 49, there has been a lot of reflection.

There's been a lot of consideration. And by the time we get to David, what God has been dealing with very broadly with Noah, more specifically with all creation, and then with Abraham and his descendants, and then to Israel, which is a single nation, down to the representative of that nation, which is one man, the king.

And everything's hinging on the king. Is he a good king? Then things go good. If he's a bad king, things go bad. And now we're gonna hear about the hope of Israel in Isaiah 49. So let's read verses one through nine.

The Servant Israel and the Light to the Nations

Listen, O coastlands, to me, and take heed, you peoples from afar. The Lord has called me from the womb, from the matrix of my mother he has made me. Mention of my name, and he has made my mouth like a sharp sword, and the shadow of his hand he has hidden me, and made me a polished shaft.

In his quiver he has hidden me, and he said to me, you are my servant, O Israel, and whom I will be glorified. Then I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing and in vain. Yet surely my just reward is with the Lord, and my work with my God.

And now the Lord says, who formed me? From the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, so that Israel is gathered to him. For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.

Indeed, he says, it is too small a thing that you should be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth.

Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, their Holy One, to him whom man despises, to him whom the nation abhors, to the servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise. Princes also shall worship, because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, and he has chosen you.

Thus says the Lord, in an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. I will preserve you and give you as a covenant to the people. To restore the earth, to cause them to inherit the desolate heritages, that you may say to the prisoners, go forth, to those who are in darkness, show yourselves.

They shall feed along the roads, and their pastures shall be on all desolate heights.

So there are several passages just in that one text that get quoted in the New Testament, and to a man the apostles say, this is Jesus. Sometimes Jesus himself quotes from this passage about himself, and so what we read is, okay, God has this special servant.

Now, it's helpful to read Isaiah 49 by beginning in Isaiah 40, and then reading all the way through like Isaiah 55. Don't have time for that in this podcast, but it's a glorious read.

Now, you are listener halftime, so go read that.

You do indeed, it's good, good stuff.

Daily reading.

What we see here is this is a special servant of God, God specially formed, and he said to me, you are my servant, O Israel. Okay, all right, well, hi, Israel. You are God's servant, and why did he form you from the womb?

Verse five, to bring Jacob back to him so that Israel is gathered to him. You're the servant named Israel to gather Israel back to God, okay? So there's a man named Israel, there's a nation named Israel.

Where do we get that dynamic from? Because God deals with the king as he deals with the whole people. So he stands in for everybody, right? So God has already got that pattern established in the covenant he made with David, and it's a reflection of how he deals with all of humanity because of Adam.

And now we're looking at the Messiah here, and we're thinking about the last Adam, the second Adam to come. So this servant, it's just too small a thing that the Messiah should be raised up just for Jacob, right?

So God did not send his son, the Messiah, just for Israel. That was never the plan. He came as a light to the nations, all the nations. So the ones who were close to Jerusalem and to the islands and the coastlands from afar off, everybody, and we see very clearly this is exactly what Jesus says in verse eight.

God says to his servant, I will preserve you and give you as a covenant to the people, Jesus says, this is my blood of the new covenant. I give myself as the covenant. And how big is this covenant? As a covenant to the people to restore the earth and to cause them to inherit the desolate heritages so that, as we read in another place, the knowledge, the glory of the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

So this is a huge deal. Big covenant, a new creation, a new covenant, new creation.

Here it mentions him, Jesus, as the servant, Israel. It also mentions Jacob and Israel, bringing Jacob and Israel back, and he says that's too small of a thing. It's too small of a thing for you to bring back one nation.

I'm going to have you bring back the earth, all the nations.

All the nations.

All yours, which makes me think of Psalm 2. Here he's given as a covenant, not just for one nation, but for the entire earth. So if all of the nations are given to him, what is the responsibility of the nations?

What is their relationship to this person who is being given as a covenant for them?

Right, so Jesus, all authority, amen, all, has been given to me in heaven and on earth, and that's everything, everywhere. And so all the nations are to be discipled and taught that Jesus is king, and they need to bow the knee.

And what does that mean? It means people, and people are farmers, people are soldiers, people are magistrates, anywhere, anyone, from the butcher to the king, it doesn't matter who you are. Christ is the last Adam.

He is king over everything. Everybody bow the knee, and Psalm 2 talks about that as well.

This chapter, Isaiah 49, I just saw it. It was a cross-reference I was not as familiar with, but it's cited in 2 Corinthians 2 where Paul is writing to a very Gentile church. This is Isaiah. He's quoting Isaiah to a bunch of Gentiles, and Paul is making this very appeal that you guys are getting ready to, when you bring in Psalm 2, backing up in chapter five, verse 20,.

We, Paul and his cronies, we are ambassadors for Christ. God, making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God for our sake. He made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Working together with him then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain, for he says, this is the Isaiah quote, in a favorable time I listen to you, and a day of salvation I have helped you.

Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. This chapter is in the context of, you know, it's to Israel, to coming to save Jacob, but he's also supposed to be a light to the nations.

What better chapter to appeal to when Paul is talking, hey, we are ambassadors, we're imploring all of you, and he's talking to all of these people, all of this walks of life, and this is Corinth. I mean, this is not some podunk backwater.

This is an influential city, and Paul, like Isaiah 49, is calling these people out. Now is the day.

Psalm 2, Christ's Dominion, and the Nations

Right, and so when you read through a psalm like Psalm 2, it includes everybody. There's the nations, there's all the different people who make up those nations, and you go from the lesser to the greater, so the kings and rulers are especially addressed because there are these representatives of the people, but everybody is told to kiss the sun.

Everyone is to find refuge in him. How blessed are all those who put their trust in him. You want to be blessed and not cursed? Find your refuge in Christ, you know, and that, I think, is the way that we should look at what is going on either in Russia and Ukraine and their conflict, or the conflict going on between Israel and Hamas in that region of the world.

It doesn't matter where we see chaos and violence and sin and warfare going on, what is the answer?

So in that vein, we know that there are those in all four areas that kiss the sun. Do any of these nation states, are they instructed? Are they being wise? Are they paying homage to the sun?

No, you know, if they will tell lies about the sun or they will just flat out deny him. Israel is a secular state, and those who are religious Jews don't believe that Jesus came as the Messiah. You know, the covenant that God made with them went away in AD 70.

It was obsolete and ready to pass away anyway, Hebrew says, but the Palestinians or the Islamic radicals or in regular Islam, all sorts of lies are told, stretching back to Muhammad, about who Jesus really is.

So they're not being instructed. They are not being wise and they're not serving Jesus, who is the Christ, the King of Kings.

In Psalm 2, so he points to the sun and there's a reference, you know, today I have begotten you in verse seven, but he specifically in verse eight says, "'Ask of me and I will give you the nations "'for your inheritance.'".

Again, he's talking about this king, his chosen king that he has set on Zion. "'I will give the nations as your inheritance. "'Ask and I will give them to you.'". Well, we have many nations today that are fighting each other and not kissing the sun and they're his inheritance.

What happens to them if they don't repent and they don't kiss the sun? It says there in the text, "'Kiss the sun, lest he be angry "'and you perish in the way.'". Who perishes? The nations. The nations who don't kiss the sun perish in the way and this would be all the nations.

And will we make distinctions today over who are the nations and who are the kings still? Right, like, because we may eventually have a nation that does without a king who doesn't as well because he will inherit the nations, right?

But not every king's gonna be a part of that either.

All right, so we see the great multitude in Revelation 5 and 7. The people, the nations, the tongues that are purchased by his blood gathered in innumerable multitude in praise and glory to him. Now, among them, there may be among them those who served as kings and judges, okay?

But in Psalm 2, we see that those are not the same. There are the nations he's inherited but we see the influence of kings and judges have over various nations. They have a king over them because he's on a mountain and this mountain is taller than any other mountain.

This is a mountain called Mount Zion which we're told in Galatians 4 and Hebrews 12 is not a mountain that can be touched. It's a heavenly mountain where Christ is reigning from the right hand of God.

Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases and Christ is his right hand mediator. So Christ is fully God, has all the authority of God and reigns from heaven over all other kings. So that's why all must submit to him.

Have instructions ever come down from a mountain that can't be touched?

Yes, yes, yeah. That would be the Mosaic Covenant which brings up a question, a clarifying question before we move on. You had said that the old covenant has passed away and that has been done away with.

However, we had just gotten done reading in Galatians 3 how the promises to Abraham have been fulfilled. So this hasn't just vaporized, that hasn't gone away. Can you draw that distinction with what has passed away and what has been fulfilled in Christ.

And if you need to draw in the analogy of mountains that should not be touched, please feel free and fire away.

Christ Has Fulfilled the Law and the Prophets

Yeah, so the contrast there is in Hebrews 12 where it talks about the old covenant and a very effective centerpiece for thinking about the old covenant is Mount Sinai and all the terror and so on. You weren't allowed to touch that mountain but in contrast, there's Mount Zion, a mountain that cannot be touched because it's a spiritual mountain and therefore because it's a kingdom of heaven, it cannot be shaken while everything else does get shaken.

So when we think about what has passed away versus what has been fulfilled, what did Jesus say in Matthew 5, 17? Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I have not come to destroy but to fulfill.

So when you read, the law and the prophets is a way of, it's in the New Testament, the way of kind of talking about the whole thing. Remember that the Old Testament scriptures was called the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Kethuvim, the law, the prophets and the writings.

And so sometimes you'll see the law being talked about as all of the Old Testament, all the Hebrew scriptures. Sometimes law and the prophets stand for the whole thing and then sometimes Jesus actually says the law, the prophets and the writings.

Now, what does he say about that? He doesn't say, I've come to destroy the Old Testament. I do not come to destroy but to fulfill. What does that mean?

I hear the word abrogated thrown around a lot. That seems different than fulfill.

There's no good.

Yeah. It's not been abrogated, like it was tossed aside, it's thrown away.

There's all kinds of words, I think, that are just not helpful. What word is used in the scripture? I don't have, we don't have abrogated in the scripture. Like, come on.

Charles Spurgeon.

Yeah.

Sorry, he was one of them.

Yeah.

But I figure, you know, I figured God knew what, you know, what words would work best. And what he said was, I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. In other words, Christ comes to fulfill all of the Old Testament, not just the Mosaic covenant, not just the Abrahamic covenant, not just, you know, parts of things, but all of it, okay?

He came to fulfill it all. He didn't destroy it, he fulfilled it. Its end is not in Christ destroying it, its end is in him fulfilling it. Christ is the end of the law and righteousness for all who believe.

Okay, the Romans 10 .4. So Jesus is, I do not think that I came to destroy the law. Why would they think that? Because he's about to say some things that sounds like he's against the law.

But he's not.

The law testified of him. He said, if you believe Moses, you would have believed me because he wrote of me. So he says, I did not come to destroy the law of the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.

So what parts did he fulfill? All of it. There's perfect harmony between Old Testament and New Testament because Christ fulfills it. And there's perfect discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant because the Old Covenant passes away because it's a lesser glory and it had its ministry of condemnation, but now Christ has come and there's a better covenant.

So there's perfect harmony in all scripture, perfect harmony between Old and New Testament, perfect discontinuity between Old and New Covenant. You can't put new wine into old wineskins. That just doesn't work.

So Jesus says, I didn't come to destroy but to fulfill. And notice he says in verse 18, for surely I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law until all was fulfilled.

This is Matthew 5, correct?

Matthew 5, 18, that's right. Now this verse often gets read as, okay, scripture is never going to fail and God's word is going to be perfectly preserved until the end of human history. And what a great truth that is.

I don't think it's what this verse is talking about, right? Because in Isaiah, again, going back to Isaiah, God clearly states in Isaiah in a variety of prophecies that he's going to do away with heaven and earth and then he's going to build a new heaven and an earth all within history.

And that things are going to happen after he makes the new heaven and new earth and lays a new foundation and lays a whole new way of doing things and plants new seed and so on to make a new heaven and a new earth.