Series: God and the Nations

Israel: God’s Special Nation

Exodus 19.1-6; Romans 9.1-5

God promised to bless all the nations through Abram’s posterity (Gen. 12.3). This is one of the key statements in the Bible that reveals the Divine purpose. The rest of the Bible is about how God fulfilled that promise. A nation would be used by God to bless all the other nations of the world. This special nation was the nation of Israel. From Abraham God created His very own nation. The fact that God created a nation from an old man with a barren wife underscores the fact that Israel was God’s. God created the world and He created Israel ex nihilo (out of nothing). There is simply no way to account for the existence of the Jewish people apart from the living God.

Through Israel we are meeting the one, true God. He would reveal Himself to the world by revealing Himself to them. Why did God do it this way? Why not just reveal Himself to each nation individually? Some religious pluralists think that is what God did. Every religion, they say, is a revelation of God to a particular people. And when you strip religion of its particular, historical, and cultural baggage, all religions are basically the same. But Israel’s God is different from all the other gods.

If God is the God of Israel, then we must come to God through what He revealed to Israel. That assertion will meet with a chorus of objections from our pluralistic culture that has rejected the very idea of an absolute truth. Postmodern man believes that truth is relative to culture and subjective experience. This means that one person’s view of the truth cannot be applied to another person in a different culture with a different experience. We must realize that this thinking is nothing new. That is just the same old paganism of the ancient world. Every nation had its own private religion and pantheon of deities to worship. So we are still very pagan today.

To be sure, the truth-claims of the Hebrew Bible are absolute and this creates some tension with other truth-claims. This is why the people of Israel have always been strange and have scandalized the world. But this is how God chose to reveal Himself to the world. Those who reject and hate the Jews are not only racists, they are hostile toward the living God. The world hates Israel because the world hates Israel’s God. The world has made several attempts to get rid of Israel, and they are still trying.

In spite of it all, this special nation endured and has been a conduit for God’s revelation and blessing to the rest of the nations of the world. What would the world be like without the Jews? They are truly a special and a holy people, chosen by God Himself. This is something no other nation can claim. You can’t read the Bible, Old or New Testament, without noticing how special the Jews are to God and to His plan of salvation. Salvation is of the Jews (John 4.22).

Christians should make it known to the world that we too worship and serve the God of Israel. We too can claim to be Abraham’s children because we share his faith in God. Gentile Christians owe the Jews a huge debt of gratitude. They deserve our love and respect and we should pray for their salvation through faith in Jesus, who is their Messiah. There is no place for even a hint of antisemitism in the Church. The Gospel is truly for the Jew first and then for the rest of the world (Rom. 1.16).

Israel’s Special Creation

The creation of Israel shows how God will relate to the rest of humanity. Israel did not create itself or choose to serve God on their own. Abraham himself was not seeking the one, true God. And this was the situation will all mankind. There was no one seeking God, but God was seeking us. God could have ignored us or wiped us from the earth. We deserve nothing and God does not need us. But God chose to work with humanity through the nation of Israel. Israel was not called by God because they were better than other nations. In fact, God called them a rebellious and stiff-necked people! God elected Israel according to His own gracious will and for no other reason.

Israel could never boast in her relationship with God if she remembered that God had created and called her according to the election of grace. God was setting a precedent for how He would also relate to the rest of humankind. It would be by grace that God would call and save people. We have nothing in us that might obligate God to work with us. Pride is built on the illusion that God owes us His attention.

The fact that God created Israel makes them absolutely unique in the history of the human race. The Jews are a strange people. They don’t seem to belong anywhere and have always been separate and unassimilated, like a lump of lead in the stomach that cannot be digested! God commanded them to maintain this uniqueness and not to compromise it and become like the other nations.

This uniqueness is also called holiness, and it is an aspect of God’s nature. If Israel was going to be God’s way of revealing Himself to the world, it was essential that Israel accurately represent the nature of God. It must never appear that the God of Israel is anything like the gods of the nations. Israel had to think about God’s reputation in the world. If they became like the other nations, this brought God down to the level of the gods of the nations. And that would defeat the whole purpose of Israel’s creation.

Israel was not allowed to form their own identity. Their identity was formed by their calling and relationship to God. God defined Israel. Israel did not define God and they did not define their own national identity or determine their own destiny. The rest of the nations ignored the living God and sought to establish themselves in the world according to their own desires and plans. The world is still operating like that today. But Israel belonged to God and were not to be like everyone else. “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). Israel became God’s wife when He made a covenant with them at Sinai. God promised to love and care for them and they promised to be faithful to God.

When God met Israel at Sinai He wanted to get something into their heads: belonging to a holy God is serious business! To belong to God means that God’s will is preeminent. The life of the people of Israel had to revolve around God. Many of the commands given in the Law reflect this agenda. The people had to be cultured and made to think about God as the center of their lives. Even mundane things were given a Divine meaning so the people would think about God all the time.

God did not save Israel from Egypt just to let them go their own way. Salvation is for a relationship with God. God could have rescued them from slavery from in Egypt and then just let them go to find their own way in the world, like He did with the nations at Babel. But Israel’s destiny was to belong to God.

Israel’s Special History

Exodus

The defining event of Israel’s life was their great exodus from slavery in Egypt. God Himself had caused them to come to Egypt during the days of Joseph. Egypt was the nursery of Israel. It was there that they grew from a large family into a nation. But something changed and they were oppressed by the Egyptians. They cried out under the whips of their taskmasters and God heard them and remembered His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had promised to give them their own land. But first God had to deliver them from Egypt.

This deliverance would be one of the greatest displays of God’s power and glory. Egypt was one of the great civilizations of the ancient world. And the finger of God would bring Egypt to its knees as God sent His plagues, mostly against aspects of nature that they worshiped as gods. Then came the final plague of death and the Passover when the Israelites were saved by the blood of the lamb that marked their dwellings.

The whole thing was done so that it was obvious that God had delivered His people. And this event was something that God would continually refer to and bring the people back to in their memory. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:1-2).

Israel was redeemed by God. The people already belonged to God because they were His creation in the first place and because they were Abraham’s seed. But now God had bought them, purchasing them for Himself from their bondage in Egypt and bringing them to Himself.

Sinai

The next great event in Israel’s history was Sinai. At Sinai God would reveal His glory to them. They would also hear His word and receive His Law. God entered into a covenant with the people of Israel at Sinai. Men have entered into covenants with each other from the beginning of human history. It usually involves two parties binding themselves to each other and making certain commitments. It makes a lot of sense for men to make formal agreements with each other because we can mutually benefit each other and there is always the need to hold people to their commitments.

God doesn’t need anything from men. And does anyone doubt that God would fulfill His own promises? But it was God Himself who initiated covenants. This was a remarkable condescension on God’s part since we are clearly not His equals. But God seems almost enthusiastic about binding Himself to Abraham and his descendants. God had already made a covenant with Abraham before making another agreement with Israel at Sinai.

These two covenants, the Abrahamic and the Mosaic, would be the two most important revelations of God in the Old Testament and are the very pillars of the Scriptural record.  After being redeemed from Egypt, Israel was in a covenant with God.

Exodus and Sinai really happened. God revealed Himself in actual, concrete, historical events. Other nations had written myths about the gods. Israel’s God had actually done something for them and said something to them. They did not come to know God through abstract, philosophical ideas. Israel’s God was not an idea but a living Presence. Israel’s God even did miracles for them, turning the natural laws of the universe upside-down. The pagans worshiped nature. Israel’s God ruled nature. Israel’s God was intimately involved with them and cared about their welfare, even feeding them in the wilderness every day with bread from heaven.

And Israel would always be reminded of these concrete, historical facts. As Moses said to the next generation of Israelites:         

“And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone” (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).

The historical nature of God’s revelation has an absolute tone that has always scandalized the world. The historical context of the Divine revelation in the Bible is what some have called “the scandal of particularity.” We cannot easily dismiss Israel’s history as just a national myth or a philosophy. This is not somebody’s ideas about the Divine, this is the real God speaking and acting within human history and being seen and heard by real people.

In Israel that comfortable distance that the world likes to keep between itself and the Divine had been breached by God Himself. The world had been invaded. And that was just the beginning.

Israel’s Special Gifts

Revelation

Israel was the recipient of the revelation of God. What we call the Old Testament is the beginning of God’s program of self-revelation to the entire world. But the Jews were the people who got to experience God’s glory, holiness, wrath, compassion, mercy, grace, and love. The main point of the Old Testament is not just morality but the revelation of God Himself.

The true God cannot be known through human wisdom. Even though creation speaks about the glory of God, it is a muted and incomplete revelation. The only way God can be known is through special revelation. And God gave this special revelation to Israel. “He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules” (Psalm 147:19-20).  

There were two crucial revelations of God that we get through the Jews. First, there is only one, true God. This is called Monotheism. The pagans believed in many gods, which is Polytheism. Secondly, the God of Israel created everything from nothing. The ancient pagans were either materialists, believing that matter is the ultimate substance of the universe, or pantheists, believing that all things contain the Divine nature. The Jews were so strange when compared to the ancient pagans it makes their beliefs very difficult to explain as a naturally occurring development. No one else reached these conclusions. Where did the Jews get their strange beliefs? The Bible claims that it was through revelation.

Law

When Israel was at Sinai God gave them His Law, originally written by God Himself on two stone tablets. There were many other commandments, but the whole Law is summarized by the Ten Commandments. The tablets of stone were also called the words of the Covenant (Deut. 29.9). By agreeing to obey the Law, Israel had entered into a covenant with God.

The Law can be summarized as commands about our relationship to God and commands about our relationship with each other. Jesus summarized the whole Law by saying we must love God and love each other (Matt. 22.35-40).

Everything in the Law hangs together. We cannot love God while mistreating our neighbor. Everyone recognizes that human society begins to fragment if we do not obey the Law. Even the ancient pagans knew this and we have laws from nearly every civilization that mirror the Law of God. God wrote the Law on their hearts, which is also called conscience (Rom. 2.14-15).

The Law is an expression of perfection. It is everything that must be done for a good and a complete life. Just think of what the world would be like if everyone kept the Law of God!

There is just one problem. We don’t keep it! The Israelites did not keep it. In fact, they had broken it and made a golden calf before the Covenant was even ratified! The Law was given to teach us about sin (Rom. 7.7; Gal. 3.19). Something is wrong with human nature that the Law could define but could not remedy. The failure of the Jews to keep the Law was simply a demonstration of the human condition. Everyone has fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3.23).

Promises

God was merciful to Israel and He forgave their sin. Anyone who thinks the God of the Old Testament is just an angry and vengeful deity needs to read the Scriptures more carefully! God gave them a way to atone for their sin, at least temporarily, through a system of priests and sacrifices (Heb. 9.1-7).

But the problem of sin remained with Israel throughout her history. The people repeatedly sinned against God and broke the Covenant made at Sinai. And God often punished them for their sin, even sending them into captivity, though He never completely destroyed the people. In spite of their unbelief and disobedience, God would remain faithful to the promises He had made to Israel (Jer. 31.35-37). Much of the Old Testament is about God keeping His promises in spite of human failure. The promise and the purpose of God depended on God, not on man. God promised Israel that He would deal with the problem of sin and human failure.

As their history unfolds, God sent prophets to Israel to tell them about the future and the purpose of God. The prophet Jeremiah told the people that God would eventually make a New Covenant, but not like the one made at Sinai, in which He would take away all their sins and give them a new heart that would incline them to Him (Jer. 31.31-34).

And Isaiah prophesied about a suffering servant who would take on himself the penalty for the sins of the entire nation (Isa. 53.4-6). The prophets also promised that an anointed ruler, born from the line of King David, would come to establish the Kingdom of God (Isa. 9.7; Jer. 23.5; Ezek. 34.24; Hos. 3.5; Zech. 12.10).

All of these promises were given to the people of Israel. As time went by, especially after God brought them home from captivity, they began to look expectantly for God to fulfill these promises, though even the Jews did not fully understand what this would mean for them and the rest of the world. God’s promises are always bigger and better than we anticipate.

Israel’s Special Fulfillment

There had always been a sense of incompleteness and imperfection in the Old Testament. The problem of sin was never fully addressed under the Law of Moses. In fact, the whole system of Tabernacle, Priest, and Sacrifice were constant reminders of sin and of the people’s alienation from God. The whole Law seemed to tell the people to stay back, lest God consume them (Heb. 12.18-21). But the Prophets had preached about a time when God would bring the fullness of His salvation (Isa. 46.13).

When the fullness of time had come (Gal. 4.4), the birth of the Messiah was announced in Israel. All of the announcements about Jesus’ birth included the language of fulfillment (Matt. 1.21-23; 2.1-6; Luke 1.31-33; 54-55; 68-75). The Scriptures, which had been preserved by the Jews, were being fulfilled.

Fulfillment means reaching a goal or achieving an objective. When the New Testament authors wrote about Jesus and the Gospel fulfilling the Scriptures, they were saying that the true purpose of God in the Old Testament, everything He had revealed to Israel, was going to finally be realized. If you want to summarize the message of the New Testament, it could be “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.”

The language of the Gospels is fulfillment, not replacement. God never altered His purpose, which was first announced to Abraham. The Gospel of Christ is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham (Gal. 3.8). The Law of Moses had only been added to this original promise to Abraham, because of sin, until the Seed of Abraham could come into the world (Gal. 3.16).

 A New Age has come in which all of the promises that God made to Israel are being fulfilled. In the name of Jesus there is now salvation, forgiveness, and justification (Acts 3.18-26; 13.23-39). God did not send Christ to change the Law, or to erase it, but to fulfill it and complete it. The Law was the shadow. Christ is the substance, the reality, the fullness (Heb. 10.1). The promises to the Patriarchs and the Law of Moses had been the starlight and the moonlight. Now the Day has dawned.

But the thing that surprised even the first Christians, who were Jews, was that all of the promises of God that He had given to Israel and then fulfilled in Jesus were also for Gentiles who would believe. God had said that Abraham’s Seed would bless the whole world. What Jesus had brought was big enough to include the other nations. It was now possible for Gentiles to become children of Abraham, not by keeping the Law, but through faith in Jesus, just as Abraham had been justified through his faith in God’s promise (Rom. 4.16-17).

Think of the people of Israel like a family tree. Abraham, and all of the promises God made to him, are the root of that tree. And all the descendants of Abraham are the branches. It was now possible that Gentiles could be grafted into that family tree and receive all of the blessings of God! God did not chop down the family tree and plant another. The Church did not replace Israel. The Gentiles were grafted into Israel’s family tree. There is only one People of God, one holy nation, made up of both Jews and Gentiles who believe (Eph. 2.11-22; 1 Pet. 2.4-10).

The sad thing was that many of the natural branches of the tree have been broken off because of their unbelief. In fact, only a remnant of the Jews received Jesus as Messiah. Most of them rejected Him. Is there hope for the people of Israel to turn to their own Messiah? Of course there is hope! If there is no hope for the Jews, then there is certainly no hope for the rest of us. But if God can graft the Gentiles in, we who had not been cultivated for this at all, then He is also able to put the Jews back into their own family tree (Rom. 11.16-32). This is exactly what have we learned from Israel’s history: The Promise has never depended on man’s effort or will but has always been moved forward by the grace and mercy of God.