WHY I DON'T PREACH ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN ISRAEL
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 13.34-35)
Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, the “Holy City”, the site of the Temple “where God lived”, had a habit of not living up to its calling or its name. Jerusalem had killed the prophets and when Jesus was speaking these words, was planning to kill Him. He came to call the nation to repentance and blessing, but Jerusalem ignored Him, seeing Him not as a king to be honored and followed but as a dangerous terrorist to be crucified.
Jesus warned the Jews that God would judge them for this. The city and its Temple, He said, would be surrounded, burnt, and dismantled (Luke 21.20-24; Matthew 22.7, 24.1-2). The nation would cease to exist and would be replaced by a different “nation” in God’s plan (Matthew 21.43).
The Jewish leaders scoffed at such pronouncements, confident that, being descended from Abraham, they alone were Abraham’s children. Who could take their place? Unclean Gentiles? God, they were certain, could not raise up children to Abraham “from these stones” (Matthew 3.9).
Within forty years Jesus’ predictions came to pass. The Romans crushed Jerusalem in AD 70. Three years later Judea breathed its last at Masada. The Jews were scattered across the empire, their homeland lost.
But in addition to the threats, Jesus had held out hope to the Jewish nation: And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
The Jewish hope lay not in military victories, economic prowess, or political treaties with powerful Gentile nations. The Jewish hope lay in turning to faith in the Christ. Change your mind about Jesus! Don’t condemn Him and curse Him! Accept Him as the blessed and chosen One! Confess Him!
Faith is (and always has been) the way to have standing with God. Ethnicity never had anything to do with it. All, whether Jew or Gentile, must come to believe in the King and Savior that Israel rejected and crucified.
That is how it is and will always be.
The only figure, then, that really matters for modern Jewish politics is Jesus. As long as the state of Israel rejects Him, Israel’s status remains forfeited. She remains a nation like any other nation.
The modern state of Israel is not “the chosen people”. Jesus Christ is the chosen One; those that follow Him, Jew or Gentile, are the chosen people (1 Peter 2.4-10). Those Jews who remain in unbelief are “cut off” but can be restored by believing that Jesus is the Christ (Romans 11.19-23).
I don’t jump into preaching excitedly about prophetic topics every time some shocking military or political event takes place in Israel because those events have little, if any, immediate significance for biblical prophecy.
When sparks of faith in Christ begin to light up in Israel, we’ll know that something important is happening there.
Those last two paragraphs may have made some of you say, “Hey, wait a minute! WHAT???” More on that in the next blog…
Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 13.34-35)
Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, the “Holy City”, the site of the Temple “where God lived”, had a habit of not living up to its calling or its name. Jerusalem had killed the prophets and when Jesus was speaking these words, was planning to kill Him. He came to call the nation to repentance and blessing, but Jerusalem ignored Him, seeing Him not as a king to be honored and followed but as a dangerous terrorist to be crucified.
Jesus warned the Jews that God would judge them for this. The city and its Temple, He said, would be surrounded, burnt, and dismantled (Luke 21.20-24; Matthew 22.7, 24.1-2). The nation would cease to exist and would be replaced by a different “nation” in God’s plan (Matthew 21.43).
The Jewish leaders scoffed at such pronouncements, confident that, being descended from Abraham, they alone were Abraham’s children. Who could take their place? Unclean Gentiles? God, they were certain, could not raise up children to Abraham “from these stones” (Matthew 3.9).
Within forty years Jesus’ predictions came to pass. The Romans crushed Jerusalem in AD 70. Three years later Judea breathed its last at Masada. The Jews were scattered across the empire, their homeland lost.
But in addition to the threats, Jesus had held out hope to the Jewish nation: And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
The Jewish hope lay not in military victories, economic prowess, or political treaties with powerful Gentile nations. The Jewish hope lay in turning to faith in the Christ. Change your mind about Jesus! Don’t condemn Him and curse Him! Accept Him as the blessed and chosen One! Confess Him!
Faith is (and always has been) the way to have standing with God. Ethnicity never had anything to do with it. All, whether Jew or Gentile, must come to believe in the King and Savior that Israel rejected and crucified.
That is how it is and will always be.
The only figure, then, that really matters for modern Jewish politics is Jesus. As long as the state of Israel rejects Him, Israel’s status remains forfeited. She remains a nation like any other nation.
The modern state of Israel is not “the chosen people”. Jesus Christ is the chosen One; those that follow Him, Jew or Gentile, are the chosen people (1 Peter 2.4-10). Those Jews who remain in unbelief are “cut off” but can be restored by believing that Jesus is the Christ (Romans 11.19-23).
I don’t jump into preaching excitedly about prophetic topics every time some shocking military or political event takes place in Israel because those events have little, if any, immediate significance for biblical prophecy.
When sparks of faith in Christ begin to light up in Israel, we’ll know that something important is happening there.
Those last two paragraphs may have made some of you say, “Hey, wait a minute! WHAT???” More on that in the next blog…