5 Reasons Why Israel Should Matter to Christians

Last updated on: June 26, 2017 at 7:29 am by Gerald McDermott

5 Reasons Why Israel Should Matter to Christians 2017-06-26T07:29:22-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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For most of the last 2000 years Christians have thought that Israel doesn’t matter. The people of Israel don’t matter because God (supposedly) transferred the covenant from Jewish Israel to the Gentile church. And the land of Israel doesn’t matter because Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth, (supposedly) leaving behind that little strip of land on the Mediterranean.

But Israel should matter to Christians because Israel mattered to Jesus. The gospels indicate that Jesus predicted a future return of Jews to a restored Israel. In Matt. 24 he says that when the Son of Man returns “all the tribes of the land will mourn,” quoting Zechariah’s prophecy about the twelve tribes of Israel mourning when “the LORD will give salvation to the tents of Judah” (Zech 12:7, 10). Then in Matthew 19 Jesus tells his disciples that “in the new world . . . you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” E.P. Sanders observed in Jesus and Judaism that these repeated references to the twelve tribes imply restoration of Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. Luke records Anna speaking of the baby Jesus “to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38), and Jesus’ expectation that when he returns Israel will welcome him: “You will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Luke 13:34-35). He suggests that the return will be in Jerusalem (Luke 21:24-28). When Jesus’ disciples asked Jesus just before his ascension, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6), Jesus did not challenge their assumption that one day the kingdom would be restored to physical Israel. He simply said the Father had set the date, and they did not need to know it yet. It was these sorts of indications in the gospels and Acts that caused Oxford historian Marcus Bockmuehl to write that “the early Jesus movement evidently continued to focus upon the restoration of Israel’s twelve tribes in a new messianic kingdom.”

What about the meek inheriting the “earth” (Mt 5:5)? Jesus was quoting Psalm 37:11, where the clear meaning is “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land.” That last phrase is used five times in this psalm, and each time it refers to the land of Israel, not the whole earth. Jesus was probably referring to the new heavens and new earth which he described later in Matthew as the palingenesia or “renewal of all things” (19:28 NRSV).

Israel should matter to Christians because Israel mattered to Paul. The apostle to the Gentiles insisted that Jews who rejected Jesus were still beloved by God and that God kept his covenant with them as a people. He told the church in Rome that “they are enemies of the gospel for your sake,” but they “are still beloved of God because of their forefathers” and “because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:28–29). He does not say that non-messianic Jews “were beloved” but “are beloved.” Not past but present tense. Even though they chose not to believe the gospel, they are still beloved of God. God still loves them. And not in the way that God loves all people, but with a special kind of love. That is clear from Paul’s long discussion of Jews in Romans 9–11. Their “gifts and calling” were still in place. Their “calling” was their covenant, enacted when God called Abraham into a special relationship with himself, so that Abraham and his descendants would be God’s chosen people.

Israel should matter to Christians because Israel mattered to Peter. In his second speech in Jerusalem after the Pentecost miracle, Peter spoke of a future apokatastasis or restoration that was to come (Acts 3:21). This was the Greek word used in the Septuagint—which was the early church’s Greek translation of the Old Testament—for the future return of Jews from all over the world to the land of Israel to reestablish a Jewish nation.

Israel should matter to Christians because Israel mattered to John the author of the book of Revelation. He says in Rev. 7:4-9 that the 144,000 from “every tribe of the sons of Israel” will be distinct from the “great multitude that could not be counted from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”–traditional biblical language for gentiles. The book of Revelation also says that Christ in glory will “hold the key of David” (3:7) and that he is “the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” (5:5). Revelation names all twelve tribes of the nation of Israel (7:1-8), says the two witnesses will be killed in Jerusalem (11:8), and predicts that the battle of Armageddon will be in a valley in northern Israel (16:16). The new Jerusalem will have twelve gates inscribed with the names of the “twelve tribes of the sons of Israel” (21:2, 12).

Israel should matter to Christians because it was through her that we came to know God. Jesus said “salvation is from the Jews” (Jn 4:22). Paul wrote that not only Jewish light but also Jewish resistance to light helped save us gentiles. In Romans 11:25 he said that God sent Israel a “partial hardening” so that there would be space and time for “the fullness of the Gentiles” to come in. The rabbis had taught—and apparently Paul believed the same—that when all Israel accepted their Messiah, the end of the world would come. Apparently this was why, according to Paul, most Jews were not accepting the Messiah. It was “for your sake” (11:28)—for the sake of the gentiles. They were given light to recognize the Messiah because God was withholding light from most Jews. Somehow the laws of the kingdom were such that if most Jews embraced their Messiah, it would close the door to future gentiles who might have come in. Paul does not disclose why this was so, but he seems to have believed in this zero-sum-like kingdom principle for the times of the Messiah. If most Jews came under the lordship of their Messiah, somehow that would close the door to a future world in which billions of gentiles would be able to come into the Messiah’s kingdom. So it was necessary, in God’s mysterious outworking of his providence, for him to harden the hearts of most Jews toward the identity of Yeshua of Nazareth.

So we gentiles owe Jews a debt. Because of what God did to them, we have been able to know their Messiah and become associate members of the “commonwealth of Israel” (Eph. 2:12). We have come to know the God of Israel and have become adopted sons and daughters of the Father of Israel (Gal. 4:5; Rom. 8:15).

Israel should matter to us.

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