What is so important about Israel and the Jewish People?
The Hebrew Scriptures record how God revealed His purposes to Abraham and his descendants. Within the larger plan of redemption, the nation of Israel was to play a vital role in the history of the world (Genesis 12:1-3; Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 7:6) demonstrating the holiness and goodness of God as a witness to the surrounding nations. Israel’s prominence among the nations was to include geographic, economic and political supremacy testifying to God’s greatness and leading the Gentiles to recognize Him as the One True God.
Israel’s failure to abide by the terms of its covenant relationship, forfeited its role to bring about the blessings God intended for the world and postponed God’s intention to honor Israel as the head of the nations. God’s plan to manifest his glory focused on the coming of Jesus. He was the Jewish Messiah sent to redeem individuals from every nation, ethnic group, language and tribe.
Every aspect of what Jesus taught his disciples was a fulfillment of promises found in the Hebrew Scriptures. His earliest followers were all Jews and the Early Church was largely composed of Jewish believers. The most controversial subject in the Book of Acts was how to fulfill the divine mandate to include the Gentiles into God’s plan of redemption and to preach the Gospel, void of Mosaic ritual laws, to the uttermost parts of the earth.
In the subsequent centuries, the Jewish people lost their God-given homeland and became ostracized and even persecuted during the expansion and establishment of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire. With time, this state sanctioned Christendom had lost its biblical moorings and failed to appreciate God’s continual purposes for Israel.
Those purposes are explained by the apostle Paul, who ached for his people Israel in their failure to believe in the Messiah (Romans 9:2; 10:1). Yet Paul affirmed that God’s word and promises had not failed. God had his righteous remnant even in the midst of unbelief (Romans 11:5). Israel’s hardness of heart would bring about the salvation of many Gentiles, whose salvation blessings and intimate knowledge of God would cause envy among the Jews (Romans 10:19; 11:11-12). Paul labeled the hardened unbelief of Israel a mystery which was only temporary, “… Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.” (Romans 11:25-26) God will one day soften Jewish hearts and remove their animosity toward the Gospel of Jesus. His promise is that one day, the Jewish people will know their Messiah (Zecheriah 12:10).
The fact that the Jewish people survived two millennia of exile, persecution and hardship is a testimony to God’s sovereign purpose. After Hitler’s Holocaust, the Jewish people rode the wave of international guilt, which led to the establishment of the nation of Israel in Palestine in 1948. They were now back in their land, a key stage in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy associated with the Second Coming of Christ (II Thessalonians 2:3-4). Israel’s precarious situation both with her hostile neighbors and negative world opinion has also been predicted by the prophets. The Jewish people are a barometer of future events. As more come to know Jesus as Messiah, we can be expectant of His soon return.
