Happy 70th Birthday, Israel! Be a blessing!

Some of us know that the modern state of Israel was born May 14, 1948. On the Hebrew calendar it was Iyar 5, which is the date Israel celebrates. This year Iyar 5 falls in April.

I have been in Jerusalem for Independence Day, but I had to deal — way back in 2016 — with the fact that I would not be in Israel for her 70th birthday. I knew I had to leave and would not be able to return in time for this celebration.

What’s the big deal about 70? For me, the clearest connection is the 70 years of captivity ordered by God as restitution for the 490 years Israel did not observe the sabbath year (the land was supposed to rest from farming every seventh year). So I have wondered if these 70 years returned by God correspond with the 70 years lost in the Babylonian exile. Maybe. The Jewish people were without a nation or province in the Middle East from 135 to 1948, and I don’t know that we are to expect 1-to-1 restoration of those 1,800 years lost. Still, these 70 years leave me thinking and praying.

Some may protest that I have equated the modern state of Israel with biblical Israel. Maybe they agree with certain rabbis that say that there can only be a restored Israel when Messiah comes (the second time, Christians would add).

The more I study the Bible, the more I see that God works slowly, incrementally. Even Abraham had to wait for the son of promise. It was a long wait, so long that –perhaps in frustration or second-guessing — he agreed to Sarah’s plan to make a baby with the concubine Hagar. There were even more years of waiting after Ishmael was born for the conception and birth of Isaac.

I absolutely believe that in the modern state of Israel and its continued intake of Jewish immigrants from the four corners of the earth we are seeing prophecy fulfillment before our eyes, a new regathering of the exiles.

But what about the Palestinians? And what about Israel’s mistreatment of African refugees? And what about Ashkenazi racism toward Sephardic and Ethiopian Jews? And what about….?

Why do we expect Israel to be any better than we are? There is NO biblical precedent for Israel being any better than the other nations. Israel’s greatest hero (and Christian hero for that matter) is shepherd king David, an admitted adulterer and murderer. God chose Israel, called her holy and said to her “Be holy like I am holy.” That does not mean that she is perfect. We could paraphrase the Christian bumper sticker I used to see in my youth: “Christians aren’t perfect. We’re just forgiven.” Israel isn’t perfect. She’s just chosen.

Why? Why does God chose Israel? Because of Abraham.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:2-3 NRSV)

Why does God chose Abraham? Christopher J.H. Wright, in his book The Mission of God, pointed out some context I had missed before. The call of Abraham is in Genesis 12. What’s happening before that?

We first find Abraham (listed by his birth name Abram) at the end of Genesis 11 in a genealogy. To better understand Abraham, we go back one more chapter. In Genesis 10 we get another genealogy, this one naming the families of the sons of Noah, the only survivors of God’s wrath on the sinful world. Genesis 10 is also called the the table of nations. (That’s another place we see 70, by the way. There are 70 people groups in that chapter. For this reason, 70 is the number of the nations in rabbinic thought.)

The nations proceed in chapter 11 to build a tower to reach heaven so that they can make a name for themselves and not be scattered over the earth, a direct violation of God’s command to populate the earth in Genesis 9:7. God scatters the nations by confusing their languages. Wright quotes Gerhard von Rad on the scattering:

The whole primeval history, therefore, seems to break off in shrill dissonance, and we now ask the question even more urgently: Is God’s relationship to the nations now finally broken; is God’s gracious forbearance now exhausted; has God rejected the nations in wrath forever? (As quoted in Wright, p152).

To rephrase the question: Is God through with the nations?

The answer is no. How do we know? Let’s read Genesis 12:3 again: “in you [Abraham] all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Why did God chose Abraham? To reconcile the scattered nations to himself.

Wright paraphrases a very well-known New Testament passage this way: “For God so loved the world that he chose Israel.”

Jesus, descendant of Abraham, is that blessing. Jesus’ death on the cross atones for the sins of the nations and reconciles us all back to our Creator. Jesus is the great high priest (Heb. 4:16) that makes a way for us to draw near to God as Adam and Eve did before the fall.

Von Rad’s question – Is God through with the nations? – is mirrored by Paul in Romans 9-11. Mere decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus in Jerusalem spawned a new Jewish sect, already the majority of followers of Jesus were gentiles, non-Jews, raising the question, “Is God through with Israel?” We could rephrase and ask “Is God through with Abraham?” now that Jesus has made a way for the nations to be reconciled back to God and Israel has rejected Jesus.

The answer is “By no means!” (Rom. 11:1 NRSV) “For if [Jews’] casting Yeshua aside means reconciliation for the world, what will their accepting him mean? It will be life from the dead!” (Romans 11:15 CJB)

So now, the gentiles who have found Messiah must take the Gospel, go and be blessings to all the nations, even to Israel.

 

P.S. For word of how God is already beginning to reconcile Israel and the nations through Messiah, check out this message from David Pileggi at Christ Church Jerusalem.