How Jesus Changed Israel

As the worldwide celebration of Christmas overlaps with the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, my thoughts have been increasingly on the question, “Did Christ’s coming change anything about how we as Christians should think about Israel?”

Before Jesus, the Old Testament tells us that the Jewish nation of Israel was God’s chosen people.

For you are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure. ~ Deuteronomy 7:6 (NLT)

Not only were the Jews God’s chosen people but Jerusalem was a special place where God chose to dwell.

Of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem He said: For I have chosen this Temple and set it apart to be holy—a place where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart. ~ 2 Chronicles 7:16 (NLT)

For the Lord has chosen Jerusalem; he has desired it for his home. “This is my resting place forever,” he said. “I will live here, for this is the home I desired… ~ Psalm 132:13-14 (NLT)

It is verses like these that have caused the Christian world to have a special love affair with Israel and the Jewish people. Countless Christian tourists flock to Israel, calling it the Holy Land. And many unapologetically side with Israel in any conflict because of this perception that they are special to God.

So my aim today is to interrogate this concept of a special people and a special land in light of Christ’s birth, death and resurrection.

But first I must go back a little further in history to a man called Abraham. God chose him out of all the people on the earth at that time and gave the land of Canaan (modern day Israel) to him and his descendants.

“I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.” ~ Genesis 17:7-8 (NLT)

Abraham had a son named Isaac, who had a son named Jacob. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel and it is his descendants that were referred to as the Israelites (later called Jews). Years later when the Israelites numbered over a million people, a leader named Joshua was appointed by God to lead the first military campaign to occupy the land of Canaan, birthing the first nation of Israel. The land was already occupied and the Israelites took the land by force.

However, they were never able to fully drive out the occupants. So, began the violent history of that region of the world. It changed hands many times and if we fast forward to Jesus’ birth. Jerusalem is under Roman rule and the Jews are still holding onto God’s promises. In fact, the prevailing Jewish mindset is that a savior will come in the likeness of a great military commander and overthrow the Romans, restoring Jewish rule.

BUT Jesus has a very different and up-to-that-point unprecedented agenda. His agenda has nothing to do with continuing the old paradigm. This is why to this day most Jews reject Him as the saviour that God promised. And this is the scandal, the game changer, the rock that we must either break our preferred narrative against or be broken.

Let me begin to break down this new Christ-paradigm with this verse where Paul describes some aspects of what is different because of Jesus:

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. ~ Galatians 3:26-29 (NLT)

This is MONUMENTOUS! There is no longer Jew or Gentile (read Jew or Palestinian). Who are God’s children? Who are Abraham’s descendants? Who have inherited Abraham’s promise? Answer: All who have put their faith in Christ Jesus. So are the Jews God’s special people due to their lineage? No, anyone who has faith in Jesus are His people. Jesus destroyed all national and racial barriers! Therefore all thinking, prayer, action based on the ideology that the Jewish people have some special favour in God’s eyes in comparison to non-Jewish people is fatally flawed. Note I said, in comparison to. I am not saying that they are not special. It’s just that God has adopted us all in Christ and we are all special to Him; He has no favourites.

To further cement the point:

Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promise to Israel? No, for not all who are born into the nation of Israel are truly members of God’s people! 7 Being descendants of Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. ~ Romans 9:6-7a (NLT)

What about the land is the land still special? Remember the verse above from Psalm 132 that speaks about the Temple? Listen to Jesus;

“All right,” Jesus replied. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?” But when Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said. ~ John 2:19-22 (NLT)

Jesus effectively says here that after the temple was destroyed it was replaced by His body. Again, Christ redefines what is holy. The Holy people have become those in Christ, the holy place has become His body! Paul echoes this truth:

You have not come to a physical mountain, to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. For they heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice so terrible that they begged God to stop speaking. They staggered back under God’s command: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” Moses himself was so frightened at the sight that he said, “I am terrified and trembling.” No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. Hebrews 12:18-22 (NLT).

Hallelujah! We no longer worship on this mountain or that mountain but the time has come when those who worship must worship in spirit and in truth! God is no longer interested in a special land for a special people. In fact, He never was. From the moment He called Abraham, His end game was that all nations would be blessed (Genesis 22:18). All was a physical shadow and foretaste of a deeper spiritual reality that has been made fully manifest in Christ! And thank God!

For me, this year, this is the Christmas story. While so many remain stuck in the old quagmire of violence, domination and control of a small piece of land by a select few. We, the people of Christ, should,… must have a different heartbeat.. a larger view of a God that desires peace for ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. We must be obsessed not with physical control of physical land but with heaven’s reality being made manifest on earth! We must be obsessed with heaven’s reality being made manifest in this realm.

Christmas is about the Prince of Peace and of the increase of His government and of peace
there will be no end! (Isaiah 9). So let us pray for this peace. Not a limited peace that favours a particular people. Let us pray for the peace of Christ for Israel, for Palestine, for the Gaza, for our nations. Let us herald peace on earth and goodwill to ALL men!.

Finally, when Christ’s work has reached its culmination this is how Revelations describes the reality:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” ~ Revelations 21:1-4 (NLT)

Amen.