Family of God in the Family of Nations
According to the United Nations Population Division, Israelis account for a mere .12% of the world’s population, and Israel’s landmass ranks 153rd of the 195 countries worldwide. Both statistics communicate that Israel is a thin piece of the world pie and in the family of God. And yet, daily, Israel is in the news with commentators and agitators around the globe expressing their opinions of Israel as fact.
Who is presenting the truth regarding the nation of Israel, the land, and the Jewish people worldwide? Why is there so much confusion about Israel’s history, and constant noise over their right to exist?
This tiny nation with enormous impact is best, and perhaps only, understood when we see Israel through God’s eyes. For the creator holds the truth about the creation, even as the potter determines the form and function for each vessel.
Would you like to hear for yourself what God says about Israel and their enduring purpose?
The Chosen People
The Bible is God’s love letter to us all, and He put His story of sacrifice and forgiveness in a Jewish context.
Israel appears about 2,500 times in our Bibles with Jerusalem at the heart of the story. The Scriptures were written by Jewish writers moved by the Holy Spirit. They wrote of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, sent from God, the only means for our salvation and hope of eternal life. The Bible is a Jewish story about our Jewish Messiah.
The term “chosen people” applies to the Jewish people and is familiar to many of us, but not everyone understands what it means. Does chosen imply favoritism in the family of God? Is there an unfair advantage to being chosen while others—aren’t? Are the Jewish people still chosen?
When questions such as these arise even within the Church, the answers widely vary. There’s a need for clarity and certainty on this topic.
Within the Jewish community, there can be skepticism about their chosen status. Some question if they’ve been chosen to suffer, for persecution, and point to history and current events as proof. We don’t dismiss the unwarranted Jewish suffering, but is that what chosen means?
A Famous, Fictional Family
In the famous musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the main character, Tevia, and his family live in Anatevka, a Jewish village in Russia. After hearing yet another piece of bad news, a weary Tevia looks heavenward and asks, “I know, I know we are the chosen people, but once in a while can’t You choose someone else?”
At the very foundation of seeing Israel through the Father’s eyes, we must be clear about why God chose Israel—for what purpose.
God chose Israel, not from preference or merit nor for a destiny of hardship. Israel was chosen for a divine purpose that has everything to do with connecting each of us to God.
God the Father Wants a Family
From the beginning, God’s desire and intention has been to have a close relationship with us—His creation. The Bible frames this relationship in a way we can understand, in family terms: God as a Father and us as His children. We understand God’s love and care when we see Him as our father.
In the Genesis creation account (Gen. 1-3), we find the perfect and intimate relationship between Adam and Eve and the Lord severed due to Adam and Eve’s sin. Their sin brought death into the world and the Bible tells us that sin and death spread to all mankind (see Rom. 5:12).
Every person is both wonderfully created by God (Ps.. 139) and born into the world spiritually separated from Him because of the curse of sin. From the first family in the garden of Eden onward, mankind needs a savior. We cannot solve our own sin problem because each of us is bound in sin’s power and penalty.
Immediately after Adam and Eve’s fall, God promised to one day defeat sin and death and destroy our enemy, Satan, who through deception and temptation authored the sin and fall of mankind (see Gen. 3:15). Jesus called Satan the “murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).
The Family of God through the Seed of a Woman
God promised a “seed” through the lineage of the woman. In other words, the promised one who would defeat Satan would be born a man. This seed, the Messiah, as the Bible later calls Him, would defeat sin and death and provide for our full restoration back to the Father.
How all that works out is the remarkable, beautiful, true story written in the world’s all time best-selling book—the Bible.
God the Father wants a family, and He will have one. How will He do it? How will He restore us to Himself? He could have chosen any way.
God Chose Abraham and His Family, Israel
The story of Jesus, the Messiah, is the central theme of the Bible. Every page points us to Him. He is fully God and fully man.
The prophet Isaiah wrote of Him: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us . . . and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isa. 9:6)
The promised child, the seed, is also Mighty God, Eternal Father. God became flesh and lived among us because only He could pay the price for our sin.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . The next day he (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:1, 14, 29)
To whom would the seed, the son, be born?
God and Abraham’s Family
Our sovereign God chose Abraham and his family, Israel, as the people through whom Jesus would come.
God revealed Himself through Abraham and his sons, through Moses and all the prophets. All other nations worshiped a long list of false gods. Israel alone had the revelation of the one true Creator of heaven and earth.
Israel understood God’s requirement of holiness through the Law. Sin could not be tolerated and blood had to be shed for forgiveness.
Israel received the promises and prophecies of the Messiah including His substitutionary death, resurrection, and reign. Daniel had the timing. Isaiah saw His suffering. The Psalmists, through prose and song, foretold of His agony on the cross and His future return as the King of glory.
And to Israel were given the Scriptures, our Bible.
He declares His words to Jacob, His statues and His ordinances to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any nation. (Ps. 147:19-20)
No other nation looked for a Messiah. And no other nation had its daily, weekly, and annual rhythms governed by God the way Israel had. Not to mention, no one was looking to a small town in Bethlehem for a king, the seed, to be born to a woman. Only Israel had the story.
What an entrustment!
The Treasure and the Legacy
Jesus said that from everyone who has been given much, much will be required (Luke 12:48).
The treasure given to Israel was never meant to stay only with Israel. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I commanded you,” Jesus instructed His disciples. (Matt. 28:19-20)
Israel was chosen for the special purpose of carrying the revelation of God to the ends of the earth, into every nation—to you.
If we could each retrace the path of how the gospel came to us—who told who back through the generations—we would find ourselves standing at the Mount of Olives with the disciples listening to the instruction of our resurrected Messiah.
Thank you, Israel! We thank you for carrying the message of Jesus. Thank you for the Scriptures. And thank you for your sacrifice.
God’s Perfect Plan – From Israel to You: Free PDF Download
The Bible is full of God’s promises that can encourage our faith. Together, these promises make up one master plan of God.
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