When Conversations About Israel Become Conversations About God
Israel.
What is it or who is it or where is it?
Good questions.
Let’s wrestle with it.
Did you know that before Israel was a geo-political entity it was a people. And before it was a people, Israel was a person. And all along, Israel has been an idea and a promise and a relationship with the God who is. To wrestle with Israel today is to wrestle with the reality of the God who is – real.
Remember Jacob? Jacob is one of two sons of Isaac and Rebecca. And we have to understand the story of Jacob who wrestled with God and henceforth walked with a limp and a new name: Israel.
Read Genesis 32:22-32 and see Jacob, alone by the Jabbok River, having sent his family ahead of him, and anticipating a reunion with his estranged brother, Esau. Jacob has good reason to fear and to wonder about the future. And then Jacob is not alone. There is a presence, a mysterious man, with whom Jacob wrestles all night. During the struggle Jacob is injured but Jacob refuses to let go until he is blessed. The encounter changes Jacob forever and he walks away with a blessing and a limp, a new identity and a new name— Israel. The name literally means, “one who has striven with God.” The place is Peniel because, Jacob says, this is where he faced God.
Israel makes us wrestle with the reality of the God who is real. Have you noticed how you cannot have a conversation about Israel without reference to the Bible, the promises of God, the prophecies of God…God? God has used the existence of Israel to make His presence, His power and His plans known to any who would stop long enough to wrestle with Him.
There are many ways to see Israel today and you’ve likely encountered some people who view Israel as nothing more than the product of time and chance— a post-WWII solution to a problem the world did not want to face: what to do with the Jews?
There is an undeniable connection between the Jews and the land we call Israel. But they are not synonymous. There are Jews who live outside of Israel and not every Israeli is a Jew. So they are not one and the same. Related, yes; synonymous, no.
There was a person, Israel, before there was a people. Jacob (the patriarch who is given the name Israel at Peniel because he wrestled with God), has 12 sons. Those 12 sons became the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Through the period of conquest and settlement, the Jews inhabited the land from at least 1500 BC, to the monarchy and then as a divided nation until the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 BC when the first Temple was destroyed and the Jews were exiled. The second Temple was built in 516 and following the Maccabean revolt in 167 BC, the Jews were fairly independent until the Roman conquest in 63 BC. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD and there was a failed Jewish revolt in 132.
Muslims invaders captured Jerusalem in 638 AD and Crusaders took control in 1099 AD. When the Kurdish-born Sunni Muslim Sultan Saladin conquered Jerusalem in 1187, he consolidated the Islamic region stretching from Syria to Egypt. The treaty negotiated between Saladin and the English King, Richard I the Lionheart, sealed Islamic control of the land promised by God to the Jews— the people known as Israel, the land known as Israel under the historic Jewish monarchy of Saul, David and Solomon.
But that’s all ancient history, right? Well, how long does it take for God to make good on His promises? That’s really the question you have to wrestle with today.
When do the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob expire? When do the promises God made to David expire? When do the promises God made through the prophets expire? Is there an expiration on the Berit Olam, the everlasting covenant, of God? Read Genesis 17 and Jeremiah 32:40. Jesus says of himself that his blood seals the new covenant. But what does that mean for the covenant between God and Israel— not the nation, but the people? Or the nation and the people? This is where we must wrestle.
Here’s part of the challenge—in the end, as in The End end, in the book of Revelation, there are still Jews. The Bible says 144,000 Jews are present in the vision at the end. I can’t explain so I wrestle with it.
And this is where the smarty-pants people will start throwing around multi-syllabic words designed to intimidate you. This is where you’ll start hearing words like Supersessionism (replacement theology), Dispensationalism (both traditional and progressive), Covenant theology, and Remnant theology. If someone tells you they are CERTAIN, stop and ask about how they wrestled their way through the other approaches to the conversation.
We can learn a lot about how we read and interpret the Bible as we talk about Israel. I’m still wrestling. I don’t mind telling you that. But I think that’s part of God’s goal in calling out a people for Himself. God certainly wants to bless and use Israel as a conduit of His blessing, but God also wants us all to be provoked to wrestle with Him.
So, are you wrestling with God? Literally what the word Israel means.
Don’t give up until He blesses you. And yes, you’ll walk away with a limp.
