Modern Day Israel is NOT the same as OT Israel? | Theocast Clips

High-level, what does the Scripture teach regarding God's plan for Israel and God's plan in and through Israel? You and I, John, are covenant theologians now, so we are not people that see this radical, disjointed disunity between the Old and New Testament.

That's not at all what we're saying. But, having said that, our understanding as covenantal theologians is that God, without question, chose the nation of Israel. They were uniquely adopted by Him as His people, and God had specific purposes that He meant to accomplish in and through them.

And He established the nation through the covenant that He made with Abraham, where He promised Abraham descendants, like a number of physical offspring, and He promised a land that that people would dwell in.

He promised also that kings would come from Abraham and the like. Having said that, later on in the Old Testament... So this is all like Genesis 12. Genesis 12, 1, 2, 3, I will bless us and bless you, that's right.

That's where all that comes from. But then later on in the Old Testament, regarding the specific promises to Abraham, descendants and a land and kings and all that, when you get into the book of Joshua, when you get into the book of Nehemiah and other places, Scripture is plain that everything God promised that He would do for Abraham, He did it.

Now, alongside those temporal purposes that God had in establishing a people in a land, what was He ultimately doing? He was using Israel and ministering in and through Israel, working in and through Israel to bring the Christ who would save Israel and who would save the nations.

And so the salvation of the nations came through the nation of Israel. And so that people was established and put in the land of Canaan and governed by God's law and all of those kinds of things, and the covenant in particular that God made with David, after the covenant God made with Abraham, and the covenant made through Moses with the people, God makes a covenant with David.

There's a promised son of David who's going to come, who's going to represent the people and save the nation. And we know that Jew and Gentile alike, anyone who will ever dwell with God forever in the new heavens and the new earth, has been saved by Jesus of Nazareth, who was the goal of everything that God was doing in and through this people.

And that has to be remembered, because then as Jesus comes and ushers in the new covenant, and He, the covenant, to use our language John, the covenant of grace is established with the coming of Jesus Christ, we now have to say that these promises that were uniquely situated in the Mosaic covenant, for example, how God is going to, with this unique people group, this geopolitical entity that is Israel, those things existed, those promises and those verses, like I'm going to bless those who bless you, I'm going to curse those who curse you, existed for a period of time in redemptive history.

And then with the coming of Christ, the fulfillment of God's plan is here, and the gospel is now going to go to the nations, and God's people on earth are now the church that includes Jew and Gentile.

It's not only a geopolitical entity that isn't the nation of Israel under the old covenant in the land of Canaan. And so that kind of clear understanding is needed to start to try to parse this out in terms of how we should think about the geopolitical entity that is Israel now post -1948.

Last comment from me, that geopolitical entity is not Israel under the old covenant. That's not how we should understand it. Israel established by the covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David, that nation ceased to be when Rome flattened it.