"A Biblical Perspective on Israel" Selected Scriptures Sunday Morning Worship Service

When I became a Christian, I started attending a small non-denominational Bible church in Albuquerque.

It's a church I got saved at.

Very, very faithful, faithful church.

But uh they moved buildings after a year, and the new building they moved into, they planted a tree in the front yard of the church in the courtyard there, and the tree had a plaque on it and that said Yod bi Yod, and underneath that, bless them, blessed by God, and had a picture of two hands holding each other.

It looked kind of like the Girl Scouts logo.

Uh and I thought that that was uh odd.

I didn't know what it meant.

It wasn't until many years later I learned what Yod biod means.

Yod is the Hebrew letter, uh, this small Hebrew letter, and it also stands as the word for hand.

The Hebrew letter yod looks like hand, and so it's a bit of a pun in Hebrew.

Yod bi-od means hand in hand.

And it was a tree commemorating uh the church's affinity with and standing with, connection with Israel.

Um, so yod-bi-od, hand in hand, uh, the church and Israel uh hand in hand together.

There are of course more pernicious forms of this theology.

You know, you think of John Haggie and his dual covenant theology, somebody like that teaches that there's two ways to be saved, one through Christ in the church and one through uh Abraham's offspring for Israel.

So the Israelites can be saved by virtue of their uh faith in Judaism without or separate to Christ.

But obviously that's wrong.

That requires ignoring, well, the New Testament along with some other verses.

Uh but more specifically, there's there's other versions of that kind of uh pro-Israel theology that run amok.

I think it's oftentimes Christians' disposition in their hearts to quote stand with Israel.

You know, some Christians have come to churches where they blow shafars at worship or they have satyr dinners or or whatnot.

And so there's this idea built into your heart that I've got to stand with Israel.

And I hope to give you this morning a more robust understanding of what Israel is and what it stands for and how we ought to think and to view it.

There is uh the reality that Israel is an anomaly, it's unique in the world.

There's nothing else like it.

It's the only nation that was expressly formed by God for a particular purpose.

It's the only nation at the end of the Bible that we know the future of.

We know what's going to happen to Israel in the future.

We know there's nations in the future, and Israel is described uh in Revelation 20 through 22.

So we know it has a unique beginning and a unique end, and it is all over the Bible.

Uh it's a city with no strategic value.

If you think about it in a geopolitical sense, there is nothing significant about Jerusalem.

It is up in the mountains, there's no river that runs through it, it's not easily accessible.

You can't, like even bandits in the ancient Near East couldn't hide there and raid the highways.

There's a highway through Jericho, there's a highway upon around the Mediterranean coast back in um ancient Near East times.

Jerusalem had no value.

You had to go out of your way to get there.

And it remains that way to say, it doesn't even have an airport.

I mean, there's there's nothing significant about that city from a geopolitical context, and yet it is the focus of every world conflict, isn't it?

I mean, major religions from Christianity and the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and the uh Amoric Church to the Coptic Church to Judaism to Islam, they all fight over that city, a city with no value.

It is called the holy city.

And yet, if you've been there, you know that it is populated mostly by charlatans and frauds.

It's such an ironic twist, uh isn't it?

Um why is it?

Why is it the case?

Uh there is a uniqueness to Israel.

I recently got a book on biblical theology by an author that I that I like.

He had written a book on typology that I loved, and so he released a book on biblical theology.

I was excited to get it.

Amazon pre-order, it arrives at my house when I was home, a little party in my foyer, get the book.

I was happy for it.

And I start looking through it, and it, you know, it has what the biblical theology of the garden, the biblical theology of fruits, biblical theology of work, of marriage, of hats, I mean the biblical theology of everything.

But it doesn't have anything on Israel, which is such like a glaring omission.

When you look at the scope of Israel, it's without exaggeration, probably two-thirds of the Bible, either directly or indirectly, deals with Israel, is a massive theme in the scripture.

And that to ignore it is to skip over uh so much of what scripture says.

And it's so common in the church today to do just that, to appropriate the law or Torah for Christians in some sort of spiritual sense, and then just say the rest of the scripture is fulfilled in Christ.

The New Testament is a guide to worship, Proverbs is a guide to wisdom, the Torah is a guide for some kind of ethical living.

You divide the law up into different categories, and then you just skip everything else in the Old Testament in some sense.

And I know if people who believe this were listening to me, they wouldn't say, I don't skip it.

I just read the New Testament and read the New Testament, meaning backwards into the Old Testament.

Uh, and it just short circuits so much of what the Bible says is going on in the world.

Israel is a massive theme in the Bible, and I think it's important for you to understand it, and that makes sense because it is a massive source of conflict in the world today.

I'm not advocating that you read uh the newspaper if you remember what those are.

I'm not advocating that you read the news in one hand and the Bible in the other hand and try to make them fit together or anything, but I am saying that the conflict you're seeing in Israel today is the outpouring of a conflict that has been going on in the Bible and that is described in the Bible.

So let me give you my conclusion right now up front, so you're not trying to read through the lines here.

Uh I want to argue this morning that Israel has a unique role in God's working in the world.

I want to flesh that out to you.

They're a nation that is under God's curse right now, and that explains the bloodshed and the violence that you see there.

Nevertheless, it's a nation God is not through with.

Christians have no obligation to stand with Israel in any kind of moral sense.

Uh, the promises given to Israel that we'll look at this morning about blessings to those who bless you and curses to those who curse you are in a very real sense fulfilled in Christ.

And I'll explain what I mean that as we go through.

Nevertheless, Israel is a nation that is a beacon of democracy in the Arab world.

It makes sense for us from a political perspective to be aligned with them.

They were formed at a time when the nations around them didn't let women vote or drive, and Israel does both.

It's a nation that stood, has stood for freedom and as a refuge for those who are persecuted.

There's been probably no people group or no ethnic group more persecuted in the world other than Jews.

How they've been uh just butchered through the Holocaust and throughout their history, of course.

And so it makes sense for them to have a land where they should be able to defend themselves.

And I don't I reject kind of the both sides ideology that, yeah, you know, sure certainly rockets are launched at civilians, but you know, there's good people on both sides, so to speak.

I totally reject that.

Uh what Hamas does in Israel is terrorism, it is violence, and God will avenge innocent people.

Those that murder innocent people, God will avenge their deaths.

Of course he will.

The scripture makes that clear.

Uh, nevertheless, um, there's Israel is not in a unique relationship with the Lord right now because they're outside of Christ, they're under his judgment.

Now I want to flesh all that out this morning by give you an arc of what the Bible teaches about Israel that I hope will help you make sense of this as you're reading it about it in the news and in the Word of God.

You can begin in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

This is where Israel begins in the scripture with Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

As you're making your way there, you think, why do people persecute the Jews so much?

Um and some of it's political.

Like I said, they're different than the nations around them.

They were established by letting women vote and drive.

Part of it is cultural.

You know, Israel was established as one of the first LGBQ-friendly nations in the world, and it's surrounded by nations that throw homosexuals off the roofs of buildings, you know?

So they have a cultural way of standing out, and that's not new either.

God designed them in some sense, not to be LGBTQ friendly, but God did design them to stand out among the nations.

They look different, they dress different, they speak a different language, they eat different food.

They were designed by God to stand out, and that's certainly on display today.

But some of it is largely religious.

If you understand the Islamic worldview, central to the Islamic worldview is that Islam is supposed to expand, have a growing empire, an ever-increasing Muslim empire that grows throughout world history until it finally conquers the earth.

And Islamic scholars will argue that has been true in every generation.

The Islamic Empire has expanded.

Well, in 1948, Israel is founded as a Jewish nation in the middle of the Islamic Empire.

And that's like poking both of your eyes out in Islam.

I mean, its very existence counters the whole Islamic worldview.

And so there is really an irrational violence and hatred towards them.

But of course, persecution of the Jews isn't isolated to Muslims, it has existed from all kinds of people throughout history.

And that is because of their differences, their distinctiveness, and because people hate God and they lash out at people that God organized or founded.

And that's what we see in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

This is the birth of Israel.

This is after the flood, this is after Babel.

This is after the days of Peleg, if you remember, God flooded the earth, destroying all people except for Noah's family with the flood.

He repopulated the earth through Noah's family.

Noah's family dispreads out, they start the nations.

There was one continent in the world then.

There weren't different continents.

It's as the nations start, they build the Tower of Babel.

God scatters languages, confuses languages, and then the continents begin to drift.

That's called the days of Peleg in Genesis 10.

The continents begin to divide and they isolate nations, they isolate languages.

The overarching question, if you're reading Genesis for the first time, and you get to Genesis 12, is this where is the Savior going to come?

God promised a Messiah to Adam, God promised a Messiah through Seth, God promised a Savior who would come to the earth.

What nation is he gonna come to?

Where should you be in the lookout?

And the answer Genesis 12 gives is none of the nations.

God will not choose one of the nations started by one of Abram's, or by one of Noah's children.

He will not start choose one of those nations.

God's gonna start a brand new nation.

That's why Genesis 12 1 begins.

Yahweh said to Abram, Go out of your country, go away from your kindred, go away from your father's house to a land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation, verse 2 says.

So Abram is supposed to separate from Ur, go out of the land of the Chaldeans, and he's going to make a brand new nation.

So God will not send the Savior to the world in a pre-existing nation.

He's going to make a new nation whose express purpose is to guard the promise of God, guard the promise given to Adam and to Seth and to Noah even, to guard the promise of God that the Savior would come to the earth.

He chooses a brand new nation.

And this begins our outline of covenant.

God begins Israel by working through a covenant with them.

He's going to make a great nation from Abraham.

They will be a blessing.

Verse 3 is the famous verse: I will bless those who bless you.

Him who dishonors you, I will curse.

All the families of the earth will be blessed through through Abraham.

This is talking about the advent of the Messiah, the coming of Jesus Christ.

This is not a statement for, you know, geopolitical realities in the Mediterranean basin here.

The nations that treaty with Israel will be blessed by God.

Those that go to war against Israel will be cursed by God.

There's a sense in which you don't want to fight Israel because you end up losing.

We'll talk about more about that later.

But this is this verse is not talking about political alliances.

It's not saying the U.S.

is blessed as long as we defend Israel.

This verse is saying the only way for a person to be blessed by God is through the descendant that will come through Abraham.

The only way to be in a right relationship with God is through the Savior, Jesus Christ, who is born as Abraham's offspring.

If you oppose Christ, you will be cursed by God.

If you rebrace Christ, you will be blessed by God.

That's what verse 3 is describing.

The difficulty, of course, is that Abram doesn't have any children, much less a nation.

He's old.

He has a couple plans for how to get a child.

You see here in the next verse, Lot.

Lot's his nephew.

Lot can be his heir.

That's going to lead to the Moabites and the Edomites.

And Sodom and Gomorrah, you recall, not a good idea.

He has another plan.

Eliezer of Damascus, his slave, his slave can be his heir.

That doesn't work.

God rejects that.

We'll see in Genesis 15.

What about Hagar?

He can have a child with Hagar and Ishmael.

Nope, that's not going to work.

There's conflict over who the heir will be.

Nevertheless, you can flip over to chapter 15.

Genesis 15.

Lord appears to Abram.

He says, Don't be afraid, Abram, I'm still going to reward you.

Despite your foolishness with the Egyptians, despite the whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing, which a lot had already been kidnapped by this point.

All Abraham's plans are failing.

But Abram says to God, verse 3, You've given me no offspring.

You closed all my other plans.

I don't know what to do.

Maybe somebody from my household, maybe my slave, he says in verse 3.

And God says, No, uh, Eliezer of Damascus is not going to be your slave.

Instead, verse 4, your very own son will be your heir.

And he brought Abram outside, verse 5.

He said, Look towards heaven, number the stars if you can, so shall your offspring be.

Abram believed Yahweh, and Yahweh counted it to him as righteousness, verse six says.

So Abram believes the promise of God.

So now you have this dual sense in the promise given to Abram.

You have the physical promise given to Abram that he will have an heir, and that that heir will multiply and form a nation.

The nation will get the land.

We'll see that in Genesis 17, along with in Deuteronomy.

There is a physical promise inherent in this covenant with Abram that he will have physical offspring that will populate the nation of Israel.

But there's also a spiritual promise here that Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

You have this covenant that is then made where Abraham is put to sleep.

Normally a covenant is two parties that shake hands and agree.

In this case, it's two parties, but one of them is asleep.

God puts Abram to sleep, he cuts the animals himself, Yahweh walks through the animals, demonstrating that Yahweh will fulfill the covenant.

Yahweh will cause Abram's physical offspring to multiply, and Yahweh will cause Abram's spiritual offspring to multiply.

And this is all a promise that the Savior will be brought into the world through the physical nation of Israel.

But you, do you understand this?

When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, there's a sense in which the children's Sunday school song is true.

You know the Sunday school song I'm talking about, right?

I didn't even grow up in the church and I know the song.

Father Abraham had many sons, many sons.

Yeah, he did, you know, and you are one of them.

Yes, you are, or however, whatever the next line is.

You don't correct me.

You are one of those offspring when you place your faith in Jesus Christ.

You are now Abraham's child.

Not by a physical sense.

It doesn't make you Jewish.

The church is made up of both Jews and Gentiles.

A Jew or Gentile can be a descendant of Abraham through faith in the Messiah.

Nevertheless, there is still an element of the physicality of the promise.

There is still an ethnically Jewish people that populate the earth, that are identified with the land in Israel that is promised to Abram and his offspring.

That is the nation of Israel.

And God promises to put them there.

The nation will not come from Hagar.

It will not come from Ishmael.

Why not Ishmael, by the way?

Why doesn't God give the promise of the physical nation to Ishmael?

And you say, because he's the wrong mother.

Okay, fine.

So then it goes to Isaac.

But then Isaac has two children, Jacob and Esau.

And Esau was the oldest, they're twins, but Esau was the oldest, and yet the promise goes to Jacob, if you recall.

Why does the promise go to Jacob?

So that the whole nation of Israel can be a testimony to the fact that God chooses whom he will save.

God chooses what nation he will work through, and he chooses whom he's going to save.

And nobody can stay his hand and say, why did you do this?

You should have chosen Eliezer, you should have chosen Lot.

You should have chosen Ishmael, the Moabites, the Edomites.

You should have chosen Esau.

What's wrong with Esau?

He was born first.

But Romans 9 says, God chose Jacob so that we would understand God's sovereign election power.

That is what drives salvation.

This is why the nations rebel against Israel.

This is why people hate Israel.

Israel's existence is a testimony to the fact that God made a covenant with them and that God keeps his promises, that God is sovereign, not the nations.

Psalm 2 describes the nations is raging against God.

Why?

Because God will set his Messiah on the holy hill in Jerusalem.

That's why.

And the nations reject that plan of salvation.

And so they hate Israel because they hate Israel's Messiah.

That's the reality of the covenant.

Why are they called Israel, by the way?

Because God chooses Jacob, and Jacob wrestles Yahweh, fights the angel of the Lord.

I mean, wow.

And God renames Jacob Israel.

It's a testimony to the notion that Israel, God's nation, will be a nation that fights against God all the time.

All the time.

They'll wrestle God.

They fight God.

And nevertheless, at the end of the story, God will bless them.

That's why they are called Israel.

Yahweh will be their God.

They are named after Jacob, who fought the Lord and yet received a blessing anyway.

That is a little microcosm of the story of Israel in the Bible.

They fought the law, and the law will win in a very real sense.

But they will be blessed anyway.

So the covenant that God makes with Israel includes the land.

You remember he goes up on top of the mountain, Lot chooses to go left, Abraham goes right, that land will be given to the physical descendants of Abraham.

The physical descendants of Abraham will guard the promises of God and the Savior until Jesus comes to the earth.

The entirety of this represents God's electing and sovereign power.

The nations rage against it.

Number two, the curse.

The covenant with Israel does not end simply with the covenant of Israel, but it goes to a curse that is included in the covenant with Israel.

You can turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 28.

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

This is the end of the book of the end of Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, of Moses' books.

This is Moses' farewell address before he dies.

Moses doesn't get to go across Canaan with his feet, but he does go there, of course, with his soul.

His eyes see it, and the Lord takes them spiritually to the promised land, but not physically.

His last speech to them is about, we're not going to read all of it because it's, you know, a lot of chapters.

But in this speech, he tells them, you're going to be blessed by God if you keep his commands.

But if you do not keep his commands, look at Deuteronomy 28, verse 58.

Deuteronomy 28:58

Towards the end of Deuteronomy 28.

If you don't do this, bad things will happen.

All the words of this law written in this book, you better keep them.

If you don't, Yahweh, verse 59, will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions.

Afflictions severe and lasting, sickness, grievous and lasting.

He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt which you were afraid, and they'll cling to you.

Every sickness, every affliction that's not recorded in the book of this law, Yahweh will bring upon you.

In other words, God will invent new diseases to afflict them with.

Verse 62, you're as numerous as the stars of the heaven.

You'll be left few in number because you did not obey the voice of Yahweh your God.

Yahweh took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so Yahweh will take delight in ruining you and destroying you.

You'll be plucked off of the land that you're entering to take possession of it.

Yahweh will scatter you among the nations from one end of the earth to the other.

There you will serve other gods that you your forefathers didn't know.

Verse 65 Among those other nations you'll find no respite.

There will be no resting place for the sole of your feet.

Yahweh will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul.

Your life will hang it out before you.

Night and day you'll be in dread.

You'll have no assurance of life.

This is the promise to them.

If you don't keep the law, you will be judged, and the judgment refers to the scattering among the nations.

This is one passage, but believe me, there are many others that talk about how the nations will afflict them.

What does that affliction look like?

Jesus repeats this to them, doesn't he?

You're going to be judged for rejecting the Savior.

There's going to be wars.

You better hope that you don't get attacked on the Sabbath.

Remember why?

Sabbath, you're at home, you're not armed, you're easy prey to be picked off.

Isn't that exactly what happened a week ago?

The war starts on the Sabbath, they're picked off on the Sabbath, they're huddled together in their homes, slaughtered house to house.

This is what Jesus said pray, it doesn't happen on the Sabbath.

You're not pregnant when this happens.

Pray that you'll be calling for the rocks to fall.

You'll be hiding in the desert, looking for shelter.

This is the part of the covenant.

When you reject the Lord, he will bring punishment upon you and your people for breaking the covenant.

So they are judged.

They lose the promised land.

480 AD, they are exiled.

You know, David puts his faith in the Lord, he's a man after God's own heart.

The covenant is specified.

The king will come from David's loins.

Solomon receives that promise.

And then civil war.

Israel divides.

Ten tribes to the north kicked out of the land in the 6th century BC.

And then 480 BC, Judah, Benjamin, the southern two tribes, kicked out of the land.

The 12 tribes vanished, never to return.

Israel returns to the land in 400 BC, of course.

They're not divided by tribes.

They're trying to find priests.

If you remember the book of Ezra, they don't know what's going on.

The records are a mess.

They're just trying to get back into the land.

And then Jesus comes.

And when Jesus comes to them, he says, basically, are you going to receive me or not?

All of the prophets you killed.

Jesus tells them, Luke 11, verse 47, you build monuments to the prophets that your forefathers killed.

Luke 11:47

Yahweh has tried to give you the good news for centuries, and every single prophet you murdered and then built a little monument to him.

You have a statue to Isaiah, so you call yourselves people of the book, and Isaiah preached the book to us.

We were followers of Isaiah.

What happened to Isaiah again?

You sawed him in half.

All of the prophets you killed.

In fact, Jesus ironically says, Do you think I'm a prophet?

I must be murdered in Jerusalem then.

That's the only end that prophets get.

Israel is compared to a fig tree all over the Bible.

Jesus goes to the fig tree at the end of his life, looks for fruit.

There's no fruit there.

So he curses it and it withers from the top down.

And then, remember when a year left in his ministry, he brings his disciples together and he tells them the story of a farmer who planted a fig tree and he waters it and cares for it.

Fig trees have a very invasive root system.

They're dominating trees.

A lot of representations for Israel, but that would take too much time to play out.

The farmer comes and looks for fruit, and there is no fruit.

It's the time for fruit.

The tree's been in the ground for years, no fruit.

So the farmer says, Cut that worthless tree down.

Why should it take up the ground and steal all the water?

And the guy who's been tending the fig tree for forever says, Oh my lord, let me dig a trench around it.

Let me fertilize it.

Let me water it.

Let me give it extra special care for a year.

And then if it doesn't bear fruit next year, then you can cut it down.

Jesus said this with a year left in his ministry.

Now this is a representation of Israel.

They have rejected the prophets, they rejected Christ, they are under God's curse.

What does the farmer do in the story?

He comes back a year and there's no fruit.

He cuts it down.

He cuts it down.

He goes up on the city and he on the hill, the Mount of Olives, and he looks over Jerusalem, he looks over the temple, and you remember he weeps.

And he says, I wish you would have known what makes for peace for you.

But you won't receive peace.

The only way Jerusalem can have peace is through the Son of God, which they have rejected.

And so Jesus weeps.

And the kingdom will be taken from them, and they'll be scattered among the nations again.

This is the curse that they receive as they are scattered.

In a sense, this filled the 70 AD.

Jesus says every rock in this temple will be torn down.

What happened in 480 BC has happened in 70 AD.

Both are very similar.

480 BC was supposed to point them forward to Christ.

70 BC is pointing AD is pointing backwards to Christ.

Both times the people reject the promise of the Savior.

Romans 11, verse 8 says it this way: God gave them a stupor.

Romans 11:8

Eyes that wouldn't see, ears that wouldn't hear, down to this very day.

And that is the situation Israel finds himself in to this day.

Scattered among the nations under a curse by God.

That is, of course, not where their story ends.

Chapter 3 of their story is their coming home, their return.

The Bible promises that they, though they are scattered among the nations, will be brought back to the land once again.

This does not speak of the returning home that happened in 400 BC, because they were scattered again.

And so many of these promises about them returning home very clearly say that they will never be scattered again.

Ezekiel's promise is perhaps the most famous, where Ezekiel tells them, Ezekiel 34, that God will gather them from the hill countries.

He will find his sheep in the pens all around the world.

He will bring them back to the promised land.

And there they will never grieve the loss of their children again.

The mountains will never give up God's children to their enemies ever, ever again.

They will dwell in their own land forever and ever.

This is the passage where Yahweh tells Ezekiel, preach to the mountains, Ezekiel.

Preach to the mountains.

Because who's the prophecy for?

These are prophecies that were given to non-believing Israelites, and they will be fulfilled by non-believing Israelites.

And Ezekiel has none of them that will listen to him, so he preaches to the mountains and says, Mountains, these will be fulfilled on you, mountain.

Look out, mountain.

The mountain doesn't change.

Look out, Mountain.

One day the Jews will be back.

And they're going to grow their figs on you, and they will never bury the innocent victims on you ever again, Mountain.

You better rejoice, Mountains.

I love it when Ezekiel preaches the mountains.

It's one of my favorite things.

So these promises have not been fulfilled.

The innocent people are butchered and buried in the mountains last week.

These promises have not been fulfilled.

They are forward-looking to the days when Israel will be regathered.

And there are so many of these promises.

I have a hundred of them, but I won't read them all.

Selected references.

Leviticus 26, verse 44.

Leviticus 26:44

This is the end of the covenant.

End of the repetition of the covenant in Leviticus 26.

You're going to be scattered among the nations, Yahweh says, and I'll find you.

Deuteronomy 30.

In fact, your Bible is probably still open to it.

Deuteronomy 30, verses 1 through 10.

Deuteronomy 30:1–10

When all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I set before you, you will call to mind among the nations where Yahweh has driven you, and return to Yahweh your God and your children and obey his voice and his commands.

Verse 3, Yahweh your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you.

He will gather you again from all the peoples where Yahweh your God has scattered you.

There's 30 references in Isaiah.

Jeremiah has 15 references.

Ezekiel 10, probably.

Daniel chapter 9, verse 24 speaks of the regathering of Israel.

Daniel 9:24

Hosea, 12 references in Hosea, probably.

Joel chapter 2 and 3.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

Amos chapter 9.

Amos 9 · chapter mention

Obadiah speaks of this.

Micah four or five times.

Zephaniah chapter 3.

Zephaniah 3 · chapter mention

Zechariah.

This is like the arch of the book of Zechariah.

We know the end of the book of Zechariah speaks of this, them being gathered from the nations, tribe to tribe, back in the land.

Malachi chapter 3.

Malachi 3 · chapter mention

And of course Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

In that day all of Israel will be regathered.

Revelation chapter 12, the battle with the Antichrist.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

It hinges in Revelation 12 on Israel being gathered back into Jerusalem.

The Antichrist will strike them and they will flee into the wilderness.

They will be regathered.

So the question is that what happened in 1948 when Israel was re-established?

Is that what happened?

I don't know.

Maybe.

If Israel stays as the nation is until the coming of the Lord, certainly.

Re-established, brought from the nations, and put there again.

But I don't know.

I don't know the future.

If Israel is pushed off in the ocean tomorrow, I can tell you this: God will regather them in the future another time.

But God's promises will be fulfilled, and those promises do contain a hundred times that God will put his people back into the land.

Now I've heard those argue that those promises are all fulfilled by the church.

That, and you can, in a sense, that makes sense through church history.

You can kind of understand that, I guess.

You're reading the Old Testament and there's no Israel in the world.

So you come across all these promises to Israel, and you're like, well, who's that to?

The church.

But that makes a little bit less sense when you're dealing with a nation that has an Israel with the flag.

And you can fly to Tel Aviv and you can drive on the highways, and the signs are in Hebrew and everything.

Like there's a nation there called Israel that God's working through.

You go to the end of the book of Revelation, chapter 20 through 22.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

There's probably, as I said earlier, six or seven references to nations at the end of the book of Revelation.

Is one of those nations Israel?

If you answer no, you can see why that sounds pretty anti-Semitic, doesn't it?

Like all the nations of the world will be gathered in the new heavens and the new earth except Israel.

Is a bridge too far for me.

If it is Israel, does that Israel receive the promises that were given to Israel throughout the Bible?

You have to say yes.

There's just no sensible way to say, yes, the Israel in the end of the book of Revelation is the Israel throughout the Bible, but no, they do not get the promises that were given to Israel throughout the Bible.

I don't buy it.

So I think it's best to see a gathering of Israel back in the promised land that consists of them being unregenerate when they're gathered, by the way.

That's Zechariah hinges on that.

They're not saved when they're put there.

But once they're there, they will turn to the Lord.

But before that happens, number four, a calamity.

Bad things will happen to them in the promised land.

Bad things.

They're regathered, and the nations go to war against them.

And it's not pretty.

God makes a covenant with them, of course.

He sends in the Savior.

They reject the Savior, so they're under the curse.

They're scattered to the nations.

God regathers them.

When they're regathered, the armies of the nations attack.

Joel chapter 3 says they'll be invaded by Egypt.

Joel 3 · chapter mention

Daniel chapter 11 says they'll be invaded by Iran, Persia.

Daniel 11 · chapter mention

Later in Daniel 11, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, all listed by name.

Revelation 17 describes Rome and the Roman Empire.

Ezekiel 38 describes Spain.

Revelation 9 describes the Arab nations attacking them.

Ezekiel again, Gog and Magog, the modern-day Stan nations.

When you just picture that map, Israel, you can make a full circle around them.

I've named every nation around them.

In other words, they're attacked from all sides.

When that happens, there's not a good side and a bad side in the war.

It's just evil everywhere.

And yet, in the middle of that war, they will be rescued.

That's the fifth point.

In the middle of that attack, Zechariah describes the rescue that will happen to Israel.

Zechariah chapter 12, verse 9.

Zechariah 12:9

On that day I will punish the nations that have come against Jerusalem.

What day is that?

Well, Zechariah 12, verse 10.

Zechariah 12:10

On that day they will look upon me, Yahweh, whom they pierced.

And they will mourn as one mourns for an only child.

Think about that verse for a second.

Israel is going to recognize that they crucified Yahweh, the Lord of Israel.

When you got saved, you maybe mourned over your sin and felt you love Jesus and your sin put him to death.

Every Israelite will have that experience multiplied by infinity.

It's the covenant, Lord, of their nation that gives them their national identity, and they killed him.

And they'll finally recognize it.

And they will weep and mourn.

And then conversion, Zechariah 13 says, comes to all of Israel.

People will be converted, first the children, and then the wives, then the husbands.

In other words, it's not a nationalistic conversion, it's individual regeneration.

As people are added to the Lord.

In that day, Zechariah 13, verses 1 and 2, there will be mourning, the nations will be defeated, and Israel will be saved.

Zechariah 13:1

Romans 11, 26 says, in that day, all of Israel will be saved.

Those that survive the battle, all will be saved.

Numbered even in Revelation, 144,000.

12,000 from every tribe.

That doesn't mean ethnically from every tribe.

The lands are divided by tribe.

It means that the whole area of Israel will be repopulated.

12,000 people in every section will survive the battle, and in that day, every Israelite will be saved through faith in Christ when they look upon him whom they've pierced.

Now there's been a period of church history where this teaching was largely rejected.

Like the last 50 years, I think, in some senses, that a lot of people reject the teaching.

But I I'm telling you, this is not a crazy dispensationalist teaching that God has a future plan for Israel.

This has been the normal way the church throughout church history has understood Israel.

I have a list of people who have taught this, and I will read my list in its entirety.

Tertelian taught this.

Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, Anselm, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Calvin, Martin Luther, although he later changed his views at the end of his life.

Theodore Beza, William Perkins, so many of the Puritans, Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, Richard Sibbs, John Gill, my favorite, Jeremiah Burroughs, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, John Newton, Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, Thomas Boston, got an American in here, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Charles Hodge, Robert Murray McShane, Horatius Bonner, Gerhard Espas, Shed Cranfield, J.C.

Rile, John Murray, Martin Lloyd Jones, James Montgomery Boyce, R.

C.

Sproull, and Pastor Teacher, world-renowned author of books, John F.

MacArthur Jr., all have taught this.

This is not some random isolated teaching.

It's what the church has consistently held to through the years: that God appointed Israel for a purpose.

That purpose is to bring the Savior into the world and act as a beacon to the sovereignty of God and the elective purposes of God in salvation.

Because of that, the nations reject Jesus and they reject Israel because they hate God.

They wouldn't necessarily articulate it like that, although I'm sure many of them do.

They would articulate it like Israel represents things that are hostile to us and all of the brutality that Israel allegedly does, and all that is their justification.

But they have hated Israel throughout time for these reasons.

God sends the Savior to the world through Israel.

The only hope of peace for the world is through Christ.

The only hope of blessing to the world is through Christ.

All those who bless Christ are blessed by him.

All those who curse Christ and reject him are cursed by him.

Israel ironically finds itself under that curse right now.

And yet God has a future plan to redeem them, reestablish them in the promised land, and turn their hearts to him.

And in that day, God will shake the world.

Haggai chapter 2 says, Hebrews 12 repeats the promise.

Haggai 2 · chapter mention

God will shake the world.

The gold and the silver is mine, Yahweh says.

And the power and the wealth of the world will funnel towards Jerusalem, and Jesus will reign over the nations from the throne of David in Israel over the world.

That is what the future holds.

When you see the conflict in the news, you don't have to defend Israel.

There's nothing you can do that makes this prophecy happen or that keeps it from happening.

You can't hurry the advent of the Antichrist, and you can't delay the advent of the Antichrist.

You're not called to fulfill a prophecy or delay prophecy.

You know what you're called to do?

To walk justly, love mercy, speak up for the oppressed, and direct people to Christ.

That's what you're called to do.

You just do the next right thing in front of you as you trust the Lord and let the Lord take care of the program of history.

But don't be naive about it.

Know that in the future God will rule the world from Jerusalem over the nations, and that's why people hate Israel.

We don't hate Israel though for that.

We're so thankful, so thankful for Israel, historic Israel even, for bringing the Savior into the world, for guarding the promises that have led to Christ.

Now all things in world history become focused on Christ.

We rightly understand Israel and we rightly understand Christ.

We rightly understand the future and we know that Christ will consummate all things through himself.

Lord, we're grateful that you bring everything, complicated situations, but everything into focus through Christ.

We do pray for the people in Israel who are mourning unspeakable tragedy even as we speak.

Can't even imagine it.

We pray that through grief you would turn hearts towards you.

We know that you don't give up on your people.

The one who watches Israel never sleeps or slumbers.

You do not abandon your nation.

While they are cast off, your eye is still on them, and we know that you will bring them back.

We long for that day, Lord, because we long to be with you in the new heavens and the new earth.

We pray as John did that you would return to earth quickly and bring these promises to pass.

Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

Amen.

And now, for parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service time, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you, and it helps you speak to the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with all of us.