Rebuilding the Wall

The pastor of a Christian congregation wrote the following on our attitudes toward Israel - “And as you recognize the signs of the times, with the approach of the Lord's return, a line is being drawn in the sand to separate who loves Israel and will stand with the nation and who won't.” So, it seems I could find my name erased from the “Lamb’s Book of Life” if I had the wrong opinion regarding the modern state of Israel.

I thought the decisive “line in the sand” was whether one embraced or rejected Jesus. Sadly, what many church leaders advocate reflects their political agendas rather than anything taught by Jesus or their desire to bring his Gospel to “all nations,” including Israel.

[Photo by Daniel Born on Unsplash]

According to the Book of Revelation, what decides whether your “name is written in the Book of Life” is whether you “render homage to the Beast” or “follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” In the city of “New Jerusalem,” it is men “from every nation who were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb” who stand before Jesus. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it.

Paul was adamant. No longer can there be “Jew or Gentile” for the followers of Jesus. By his death, he “dismantled the wall of partition” that separated Jews from Gentiles, “that he might reconcile them both in one body for God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” So, why are so many church leaders determined to follow behind Jesus and rebuild this “wall of partition,” brick-by-brick?

What did Jesus say about the Great Divide when he returned? Let us call it his “line in the sand.” - “Will the Son of Man find the faith on the Earth?” - He said nothing about ethnicity or our attitudes toward Israel. What will count on the Last Day is “the faith,” not biological descent.

What about the covenant promises to Abraham?  John the Baptist warned the Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem - “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance! And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father, for I say to you, God is able of these stones to raise children to Abraham” – (Matthew 3:7-9).

John’s phrase, “raising children of Abraham from stones,” was not an exaggerated analogy, but a veiled prediction of what God would do. The term “stones” in his image referred to the Gentiles. As the Apostle Peter wrote to congregations that included many Gentile members:

• (1 Peter 2:5) - “You also, as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

While teaching in the Temple, Jesus responded likewise to his opponents, the “Jews” who questioned him - “Except you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins…They answered him, Our father is Abraham. Jesus said to them, If you were the children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man that told you the truth, which I heard from God. This Abraham did not do!” – (John 8:23-44).

Paul taught that Gentile believers are “grafted into the root,” and that “root” is Abraham. Gentiles, the “wild branches,” are grafted in because of their faith. In contrast, the “natural branches” are cut off because of “unbelief.” Once again, faith and obedience are the determining factors, not nationality.

God said he would bless Abraham, but He did not necessarily promise to bless all his physical descendants without exception. The Hebrew Bible provides examples of his offspring who did not inherit the promises, including Ishmael and Esau.

When God confirmed His covenant to Abraham, He promised he would become the “father of a multitude of nations.” The Gentiles were included in the covenant promises from the start.

God would “establish my covenant between me and you, and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant…And I will give to you and your seed after you, the land of your journeyings.” These words raise the question: Who is the “seed of Abraham,” and who are his “children”?

ABRAHAM’S SEED

The Apostle Paul gave us clear answers. The “seed of Abraham” was Jesus, and the “children of Abraham” were the men and women who exercised faith in him.

• “Know therefore that they who are from faith, the same are sons of Abraham, and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles from faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed. Therefore, all those from faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.” – (Galatians 3:7-9).

The covenant always envisioned the inclusion of the Gentiles, not their exclusion. The formation of Israel from the loins of Abraham was an early stage in God’s redemptive program, not its final goal. Returning to the national limitations of that incomplete revelation would be a regression to an earlier stage in God’s purposes.

At Mount Sinai, God called Israel to become his “peculiar possession,” a priestly kingdom and nation tasked with mediating His light to the nations - (Exodus 19:5). Peter applied this passage to the largely Gentile congregations of “Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia”:

• “You also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, because it is contained in scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, chosen, precious: And he that believes on him shall not be put to shame. For you that believe is the preciousness, but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner and, A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. But you yourselves are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's PERCULIAR possession, that you may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who were no people, but now are the people of God” – (1 Peter 2:5-10).

Inclusion in this “chosen race” is based on belief and exclusion on unbelief and disobedience, at least, according to the Apostle Peter.

Lest we doubt that the Abrahamic promises apply to Gentiles, the Book of Revelation is specific. By his blood, Jesus “loosed us from our sins and made us a kingdom, priests for his God.” All creation declared him worthy because “by your blood, you purchased for God men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and made them for our God a kingdom and priests; and they are reigning on the Earth” - (Revelation 5:10-14, 7:14-17).

What about the so-called “land promise”? We must heed what Paul wrote. He expanded and universalized that promise: “For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he should be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith” – (Romans 4:13-14).

Abraham has become the heir of the “world,” the kosmos, a Greek term that can include the entire Earth if not the Universe. In Revelation, the “land promise” is fulfilled in the city of “New Jerusalem,” not in ancient Jerusalem in Palestine, and the dimensions of the City are coterminous with the New Creation - (Revelation 3:12, 22:1-4).

What the New Testament teaches is fulfillment in Jesus. All the promises of God find their “Yea and Amen” in him. God’s previously hidden mysteries are revealed in Christ. “In the prophets” God spoke in “many parts and ways,” but upon “these last of the days,” He has spoken decisively in His Son. Jesus and his Apostles did not abandon the promises to Abraham. They came to fruition in him.

Yes, we should pray for the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, above all for their salvation. “For they are not all Israel, that are of Israel, neither because they are Abraham's seed, are they all children.” When Jesus arrives to gather “his chosen ones,” what good will our ethnicity do if we lack faith in him?

How we respond to Jesus determines whether we are found in the “Lamb’s Book of Life.” He is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. God has made His salvation available to all men through His Son, and on the same basis for all, whether Jewish or Gentile, the “faith of Jesus Christ.”

For this reason, the old divisions that once separated Jews and Gentiles have no place in the Assembly of Jesus Christ, there no longer can be “Jew or Gentile.” In him ALONE, the God of Abraham is FULFILLING His covenant promises for all peoples and nations. There is one covenant, one holy people, and one way of salvation.

We must allow Jesus to continue dismantling the wall as his Gospel of the Kingdom is proclaimed to ALL nations, including modern Israel. Rebuilding the wall is the betrayal of the very thing for which Jesus died and rose again – to reconcile men and women from every nation to His Father.

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