Articles
God's Israel: A Kingdom Not Of This World--Transcript
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If you so much as glance at the news, you'll see the subject of Israel pop up again and again.
It may be war, it may be politics, it may be some kind of theological debate.
Sometimes it's end time speculations, but some, when it comes to the current, even modern state of Israel, Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas in a recent interview, was quoted as saying this, As a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.
I want to be on the blessing side of things.
There was much debate about that interview after it kind of went viral, as they say, from Senator Cruz after he said that, with many opinions on both sides, some in agreement with what he said and some in disagreement with what he said.
But there is a popular belief similar to this that Senator Cruz voiced in this interview when it comes to modern day Israel.
Former U.S.
Ambassador to Israel, David Freeman, wrote, The nation of Israel today comprises a people that prays in the same language, in the same places, with the same liturgy as in ancient times.
Its faith is governed by the Old Testament.
This is the same nation of Israel referred to in the Bible.
When I heard that interview and heard those statements, it was one of those things that, you know, kind of goes up and say, that's not right.
What he said is not correct.
But then I started thinking is, well, why is it not correct? If I was going to go to scriptures to try to clarify or to show that, you know, what would I look at? And it motivated me to really open up the Bible and look and say, because if I were to come across someone with this view, which there's a lot of people out there, how would I answer that? And so with that looking and studying, I kind of put this together for our sermon tonight to look at how as Christians, as the people of God, should we look at or how should we see what is now a current modern day Israel? And is it or is it not even represented in the scriptures? So let's tackle this topic that's often in the headlines or maybe in your social media feeds or maybe in your own conversations concerning Israel and how we should view the modern day country and how it is related or as we said, maybe not related as we read in scriptures and in prophecy.
Now I'm going to say I'm not here to chase the latest news cycle.
That's not what my intention is.
Or I'm not here to preach a political sermon.
I want to ask a deeper and better question concerning this, and that's simply what does the Bible say? Because we're committed to 2nd Timothy 2 and 1st 15 to rightly divide the Word of Truth.
And this is something that seems as dividing people over opinions.
So let's consider this idea of God's Israel and how it's referred to in scriptures tonight.
And we start with God's promise to Abraham.
And I believe this is the scripture that in that interview that Senator Cruz was referring to is found there from our scripture reading earlier at Genesis the 12th chapter there in the first three verses where it was God's promise to Abraham when he told him to get up out of your country, go away, I'm gonna tell you where you'll go.
And he says when you do that, this is what's gonna happen.
I will make you a great nation.
I will bless you.
I will make your name great.
You shall 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 will be blessed.
So let's break this down into those three core promises that God makes here to Abraham.
It's first as we see God gives Abraham the promise of a land, a literal territory that his descendants would inhabit.
There's also a nation that God talks about here.
A people or a group who became Israel, the Israelites as we read of them in the Old Testament.
And then we later see as well this blessing is the third part of this promise, the blessing that through Abraham all nations would be blessed.
It's important to point out that these promises that were made to Abraham, this was not the end game so to speak, but this was the setup.
These were shadows that were pointing forward to something that was to come.
And it was pointed more specifically to someone greater that was to come.
And we'll see that as we look at how these promises were fulfilled.
And have they been fulfilled already and is it part of what we see today? So God made this promise to Abraham and we see that this promise was fulfilled as I said it was pointing to one greater that would come and of course we know who that is.
It's Jesus.
It's Christ.
And it was fulfilled with Christ in his coming.
As we fast forward to the New Testament, Paul writes and really clears this up for us if you look in Galatians 3 and verse 16 where he says, Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
He does not say and to seeds as referring to many but rather to one and to your seed that is Christ.
So who was the blessing for the whole world? Christ.
That's what Paul is saying.
As we try to dig into this a little bit deeper, we see these promises then were according to what the scriptures were saying in the Old Testament were fulfilled in Christ.
The ultimate promise then was not a plot of land.
It was not a national flag but the promise dealt with the Savior of the world.
The ultimate fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham.
It wasn't about a nation state.
It was about a Savior, Jesus.
And so at this point we see a major shift is happening.
The kingdom of God was no longer being defined by bloodlines or borders as we look at under the Old Covenant in the Old Testament.
But now we see the shift where it was now determined by faith and fruitfulness of the people.
That was the difference in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
And it wasn't about now just one group or nationality of people as we see in the Old Testament but it was something greater than open for all in the New Testament.
Jesus tells a great parable of this.
If you look in Matthew the 21st chapter as Jesus describes this.
In Matthew chapter 21 we see the parable that Jesus says as he clearly lays out I believe this concept or this principle as we look in scripture.
He says here that there was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to vine growers and went on a journey.
Now let's start to kind of decode what Jesus is talking about here and what each of these people represent.
As we look at this parable we can see the landowner I believe is God is what Jesus is saying and as the vineyard it is Israel it's the Jews and the servants then would be the prophets from the Old Testament the ones that spoke for God in the Old Testament.
It's the prophets that he talks about there is the servants.
Of course the son is represented representing Jesus and the vine growers here are the Jewish leaders in particular that would come and reject Jesus.
The ones that rejected Jesus are the ones that are represented there.
When God sent prophets they were rejected.
He sent the prophets and then he sends his son and when he sends his son they had already rejected prophets now he sends Jesus he sends his son and they reject him they kill him.
Jesus then asked when the owner of the vineyard comes what will he do? Now to their credit they got the answer right in this case although I think they missed the point.
He says they say he will bring the riches to a wretched end and tease and lease the vineyard to others who will produce fruit and then Jesus kind of drops the hammer on them so to speak there in verse 43 where he says the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that is producing the fruit of it.
What does that mean? Well here it is about that shift from a nationality of people to now the spiritual Israel the physical Israel to the spiritual Israel.
That's the change that we're talking about here.
The baton was being passed from a new to a new people and that is of course the church under the new covenant.
This is big in what Jesus says here because the physical nation of Israel particularly these unfaithful leaders of the Jews they were no longer the stewards of God's kingdom.
It was changing and it was now going to be represented by the church.
So let's talk a little bit more then about this idea of going from the physical Israel to the spiritual Israel.
That's what Jesus is saying and talking about in this parable that was going to happen and happened very soon at the time that he told this parable.
We go on to Romans chapter 9 and verse 6 and we see how Paul describes this for us as well.
In Romans 9 chapter and verse 6 it says, He goes on to say, As we see in this scripture that Paul is saying that it's not those as he says that are that are descended from Israel that are necessarily going to be the people of God under the new testament.
It's not about that anymore.
He says it's not the children of the flesh who are the children of God.
It's not about who you are as far as the ethnicity that you have.
That's not what it's about anymore.
It is the shift from the physical to the spiritual Israel.
It's also described by Paul in Galatians chapter 3 in verse 28 to 29 where he writes, There is neither Jew nor Greek.
There is neither slave nor free man.
There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise.
Paul says it doesn't matter anymore if you're Jew or Gentile.
There is no slave or free.
There's no distinctions between people that you are all one.
Spiritual Israel.
It's made up of Jews and Gentiles.
It's made up of anyone who is a believer and who is obedient to the gospel.
That's the message that Paul gives both in Romans and Galatians.
So why does what does all this mean? True Israel again, it's not about ethnicity.
It's not about the passport that you hold.
It's not about any kind of physical citizenship that you may have on this earth, but it's about who you belong to, and that's Christ.
If you belong to Christ, then you are part of God's Israel, God's spiritual Israel, God's people, which is the church.
As we continue to progress through these thoughts then, so we go from the physical to the spiritual Israel, God's chosen people today then are represented in the church.
The church then is the spiritual Israel of today, if you will, because as in the Old Covenant, God's chosen people were the Israelites, today it is those who are members of his church, who are faithful to him, who have been obedient to him, who have submitted to him.
Those are the ones that are his people today.
They represent spiritual Israel.
It has nothing to do with where you live or what nation you're from.
It has nothing to do with that.
Paul, as we said, has already described that for us.
Peter also echoes what Paul has said in 1 Peter chapter 2 in verse 9 and 10.
Peter writes, You have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Again, the message of Peter is similar to that of Paul, that you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, you are a holy people.
He says you are now the people of God.
Jews and Gentiles could be the people of God now, because you, when you are obedient to God, when you're faithful to him, when you become his child, you're the chosen race, the royal priesthood.
You become part of the holy nation.
In Ephesians 2, Paul again affirms this himself, where he says, For he himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity.
He goes on to say that he might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace.
No more Jew versus Gentile.
Now there's just the church, one body in Christ Jesus.
That is the new spiritual Jerusalem or new spiritual Israel.
Now let me say it like this.
God's plan didn't change along the way either, because some will teach that.
That God had this plan and somehow it didn't work out and he came up with plan B.
This was God's plan for all along, from the very beginning.
We see the Israelites and the people of God, his chosen people of the Old Testament, they were a shadow to a substance, from type to truth.
The things that were then were foreshadowing the things that would come within God's chosen people in the New Testament and the church.
Some people say, well there's no value in studying the Old Testament and I would beg to differ, because without knowing those things it's going to be very hard to understand how all this comes about in God's plan and what God really expects of us today.
We are now his people, but there are no more separations of Jews and Gentiles.
Now it's all one in the church.
So after saying all of this, we look at the question of, well actually a skip there from Hebrews chapter 8, we think about modern day Israel.
We'll get to that verse in just a moment.
What about modern day Israel? Remember going back to the quote that I quoted just a moment ago where the thought was that there was some significance to modern day Israel.
That indeed that we needed to be on the good side of modern day state of Israel today, or if we're not then we're probably going to be on the wrong side of God was the implication that was given there.
Should we be concerned and be worried about that? Well in Hebrews 8 and verse 13 the Hebrew writer says when he said a new covenant he has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
Modern Israel is a political nation, but it's not the center of God's redemptive plan in any way.
As the Hebrew writer points out, it was made that first covenant was made obsolete.
So the Bible does not teach that the Jews are saved apart from Christ, that there's some other plan for them.
The Bible does not teach that modern Israel must be restored for Jesus to return, and a lot of people will teach that and think that that is something that has to happen before Jesus returns.
The scriptures do not teach those things at all because as we've already looked these references to Israel is spiritual Israel.
It's referring to the church.
It's not referring to the modern state, the modern country of Israel today.
The Bible does not teach those things.
Now what the scriptures do teach is that the church is the Israel of God.
Look in Galatians 6 and verse 16 and Paul states that he says those who walk by this rule peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.
Now he's not talking about some state of Israel today and the people that live within its borders.
That's not what he's talking about.
He's talking about those who walk by this rule, the ones that are obedient to God, the ones that are following God and faithful to him.
Those are the ones that Paul calls the Israel of God.
Spiritual Israel is what we're talking about.
Not modern Israel as a political nation.
Identity again is rooted not in the law, not in ritual, not in ancestry, but it's rooted in faith.
Faith in God.
That's where it's rooted in.
So that's what the Bible does teach concerning these things and it speaks to that identity that's rooted in the Lord.
Those who walk in faith, those are the ones who Paul says are the Israel of God.
We also see that all people, Jew and Gentiles, must come to Christ for salvation.
Paul says that in Romans 1 and verse 16 where he begins by saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation.
But to everyone he says who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Paul says first the gospel is the power of God to salvation.
Who is it the power of God to salvation? Who is it the power of God to salvation to? Jews and Greeks.
To both.
So as we look again at modern Israel, we are seeing how the scriptures teach that Jews and Gentiles, the gospel is for both of them.
That's the only means of salvation whether you are Jew or Greek.
No matter what, that gospel message is for everyone.
So as we think about the modern state then of Israel today, is there any significance to it as far as the scripture state? I think we've seen very clearly through these verses that there is no significance there.
That what people think about, well we need to be on the right side of Israel so God will bless us, then there's no biblical foundation or principle that states that.
That it's a misinterpretation or a misunderstanding of what the scriptures really say.
Now you could argue from a political standpoint that maybe it's in our best interest to help them and they help us and all that, but it has nothing to do with scriptures.
It has nothing to do with our faith or what we believe as far as Israel being any more significant than any other people or country in the world today.
With all this in mind, I ask the question then, what does this mean to us? Or what should we do with all this, I guess? And I'd begin by saying that we need to honor God's fulfilled plan, that we don't go back into the shadows that we were talking about a moment ago.
Colossians the second chapter in verse 17 says, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
And what the message of that is, is that the shadows that we see from the Old Testament were just previews.
We could say Jesus is the main event.
These are things that were fulfilled in Jesus.
That's what we need to be focused on.
So understanding and having an understanding that God's plan has been fulfilled through Jesus and not going back into the shadows again of what the Old Testament teaches concerning things that are already fulfilled and looking at those as if they haven't been fulfilled yet.
That's the first thing we need to be mindful of and understanding why many go back to those things and have those beliefs.
I think also it's important that we continue to spread the message of the gospel, that it is for all as we stated already.
It is for Jew and Gentile, so that we should be spreading that gospel to everyone that we can, because it is the only means of salvation for man.
Again, there's no other plan for one group of people than another plan for another group of people.
The gospel is for the Jew and the Gentile, and the scriptures teach that over and over again.
In Acts 2 and verse 38, from the very beginning of the church, Peter says, repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is to you and your children and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God who will call to himself.
The promise is not to just one nationality of people, but it's to everyone who hears the call of God.
It's open to all who hear his call and hear the message of the gospel, and it's up to us to continue to preach and teach the message of the gospel to all men so that they can have the salvation that God offers.
I think it's also important that we pray for peace.
Many are very concerned with Israel, as I said, and staying on the good side of them, and we should pray for them, not because there's any though added significance to them over anybody else in the world, but we do need to pray for peace for all leaders, as we're told, understanding, too, that Christ is the one that gives true peace.
In 2nd Timothy chapter 2, we're told, first of all, I urge you that in treaties and prayers and petitions with thanksgiving be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
We're commanded to pray for all the ones who are leaders, and especially in government, that we can live peaceful lives, and we pray that for all mankind.
We pray that for all, that we could have peace in that way.
Again, we don't pray that because there's any added significance to Israel, but we need to be praying that about all nations and ourselves and our country as well, because this is what is commanded of us to do.
I think also what this means to us is that we do have an identity, but we need to find our identity in Christ.
Some people look for their identity in other places.
You know, our identity is not in politics, it's not in ethnicity.
Our identity is in Christ.
Galatians 2 and verse 20 says, I have been crucified with Christ, and it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
That's where our identity is.
It's in Christ.
Romans 14 and verse 8, Paul adds, if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord.
Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.
Our identity is in Christ.
We are Christians.
That's our identity.
That's who we are.
And more so than we identify with anything else, we should identify as being a child of God, being in Christ, being with him, being a Christian.
Finally, I would say that what we learn from this is our hope is not in the physical, but in the spiritual.
Our hope is not in Jerusalem that's found on a map, but our hope is found in the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city that is spoken of in Revelation 21 and the first four verses, where John writes, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.
And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacles of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among them, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no longer any death, there will be no longer any mourning or crying or pain, for the first things have passed away.
That's where our hope is, not in anything physical on this earth, but in the New Jerusalem, spiritual Jerusalem, that is, it's described here by John, that comes down out of heaven an eternity with God, a place where no sorrow or death happens, a place where there are no tears, a place of peace for eternity.
That's where our hope lies.
We need to be reminded that our citizenship is a heavenly one.
It's not about where we live or what country we are citizens of.
It's not about any of that.
What we need to be concerned about is that our citizenship is in heaven, for which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are citizens of the kingdom.
We are citizens of the kingdom of God.
We're not defined by American politics or Israeli borders or earthly kingdoms in any way.
We are defined by our King, King Jesus, and our eternal home with him.
Let us be faithful.
Let us be focused on the kingdom that can't be shaken.
Those are the things that need to be where our focus is.
I hope tonight's lesson maybe has been beneficial to you and put some things that you think and maybe if you come across someone that has these beliefs that hopefully we can be prepared to present what the scriptures really say concerning these things.
Tonight, if you're not a part of God's true Israel, the church, you can become part of it today.
Believe in Jesus, repent of your sins, confess your faith in him as the Son of God, and be baptized for forgiveness of your sins as we read earlier in Acts the second chapter as Peter taught that they should do.
If you do that, the Lord will add you to his church, his holy nation, his chosen people, his true Israel.
If you have any needs tonight, we invite you to come.
While together, we stand and sing.
