Thinking about Israel- Proclaiming the Gospel as the Best Way We can Support Israel

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm going solo today. And I just wanted to reflect a little bit on the conversation that I had with Jeremy Slavin. That was the last episode we posted. And my conversation with Jeremy was actually really great. I enjoyed meeting him. It's actually the first time we talked. And I liked a lot of what he raised during the interview. And as I, you know, as I reflected on that conversation, one thing that I really wanted to come back and address on a podcast like this one is the relationship between eschatology and current politics, we might say. But maybe just in general, you know, the way that eschatology can skew or frame or otherwise sort of condition the way that we view the world around us right now. And so, you know, over the over the course of my career, I've actually written a fair amount on messianic prophecy. I've contributed to Moody's handbook on messianic prophecy, looked at first and second Kings and one of the Psalms. I've done a, you know, a co-authored commentary on Isaiah that was all about Old Testament prophecy. And my specialty is very much Old Testament prophecy. And one of the things that I've sort of come to over the course of my career is that prophecy is is more about patterns or more often about patterns than it is about specific references. Now, that is not to deny that there are specific prophecies that are fulfilled from the Old Testament to the New Testament. But what I want to underscore here is that there are broader patterns within prophecy that tend to circle back around, that history is in some sense cyclical, maybe, is the best word to describe it, where we're seeing these different configurations of factors come back and really reintroduce themselves into our world. And in that sense, those prophecies continue to be fulfilled. In other words, the way God's world works is relatively consistent. And that consistency is not without anomaly. Anomaly is conditioned or brought about by the fall, by the brokenness of the world. But the reality is that we have these various prophetic patterns that continue to rise up. And so after my conversation with Jeremy, I got to thinking about that idea and what it is about, you know, dispensationalism, about the relationship between the church and Israel, about the current state of the state of Israel, that really should give us some pause to reflect on how we're thinking biblically and theologically, as opposed to how we're thinking about Israel as, you know, God's chosen nation, God's chosen people. So I realized that that can be a sticky subject. And so my goal in this podcast is not to necessarily even come down on one side or the other, but just to remind us that, you know, even being chosen, you know, if we just take something that's non-controversial and we say, Christians are God's chosen people. I think that's fairly evident through the New Testament. And so I don't think I'm saying anything controversial there, that Christians are chosen by God, that we are God's people, that we are to live lives that are commensurate with our calling. 2 Peter talks about, you know, living to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us from darkness to light. And so I think that that's, like I said, a fairly non-controversial statement. But at the same time, as we look at the Christian community, one of the things that we see is something like 1 John 1, 9, where confession is actually one of the key characteristics of that Christian community. We demonstrate that we are of God and united with Christ, the true people of God through confession, which assumes that we are continually sinning, that we are continually doing something that is against or at cross purposes with God. And what confession does is it reminds us and demonstrates that we are so committed to the truth that we are willing to suffer the inconvenience or the tragedy sometimes of confession in order to agree with God. And so when we confess, what we're really doing is we're saying, we agree with God. We are no longer thinking that what I've done is an appropriate thing to have done. Instead, what I have done is something that is inappropriate and now I agree with God. And so if we just think about that simple sort of framework, that we are Christians who have been saved and united with Jesus Christ through faith, that we continue to do bad things, that we continue to do things that do not represent or reflect God's glory into the world, but we do sinful things and we are in need of confession and repentance ongoing. And that that confession and repentance is a sign that we are the true people of God. I think that dynamic should really highlight something for us that I think came out in my conversation with Jeremy. And it's something that I really appreciate about what he's talking about, is that this idea that, number one, the modern Israelite state, even if our eschatological system, even if we read the scriptures such that we believe that Israel will be reconstituted in an earthly nation, which is more of a premillennial dispensational perspective on Israel, even if we believe that, we do not believe that the people of God are always in the right. You know, if we look across the Old Testament, we see that God's chosen people of Israel were ultimately taken into exile by Babylon because they were not living as God had asked them or commanded them to live. And no matter how many chances they had, they simply were not regenerated. They were not empowered to do so because they didn't have the Holy Spirit. The old covenant and the old covenant law was weak in the sense that it could not overcome human sin. And because it could not overcome human sin, Israel continued to sin. Israel continued to move away from God. They continued to worship other gods. They continued to misrepresent who God was to the world. And so even in the Old Testament, where there was no alternative, there was no church, there was no question about, is the church Israel? Is this replacement theory? Is this, you know, whatever have you. There wasn't an eschatological system that involved, you know, a tribulation and a rapture and all those kind of things. Just if we look at the Old Testament, what we see is that the chosen people of God who were given God's law and given every opportunity to follow that law were incapable of doing so. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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Even if we believe that there is going to be a reconstitution of believing Jews in the nation of Israel within a geographic location, you know, that roughly approximates the modern state of Israel. That does not mean that the modern state of Israel is above reproach. And I think a lot of times when we talk about supporting Israel, blessing Israel in order to be blessed, that is something that comes out of the Abrahamic covenant or God's initial words to Abraham where he talks about if those who bless Abraham will be blessed, those who curse Abraham will be cursed. That did not entail, though, that Abraham would never be called out on problems. It didn't entail that Abraham was always right. And so I think that there's just this sense in which, as we look at the modern state of Israel, we have to recognize that right now what we are looking at are lost Jews. And even if we're looking at...

Jews in a broad sense, right? And we won't get into, Jeremy and I discussed briefly the, you know, sort of the intermingling of ethnicities and how difficult it is at this point in history, if not earlier in history, to distinguish between ethnic Jews and ethnic Gentiles because of all the sort of intermarriages that have happened and the way that the races have intermingled. But the reality is that the state of Israel is a secular state. It's just, it's one amongst the nations. It no longer has special status. And even if we believe that it will be reconstituted by a messianic reign of Christ for a thousand years with believing Jews populating the nation of Israel and a reconstituted temple and all of those different things that are really part of a premillennial, pre-rapture sort of a system, we have to acknowledge that that does not mean that everything Israel does at this moment is appropriate. And so, again, I appeal to the Old Testament, right? We see many, many times when Israel is doing the wrong thing and prophets come and they call Israel out on the wrong things that they are doing. So there is no sense in terms of biblical understanding, biblical theology, that Israel is at any time above reproach. Now, does that mean that I am saying that, you know, what's going on in Gaza right now is completely inappropriate or that Christians need to be speaking out against what's going on in Israel or what have you? Not necessarily. I don't know enough and I don't feel like I'm in a good enough position to really speak to the specifics of the Israel-Gaza conflict right now. I know that war is regrettable. I know that war is lamentable. I find it unfortunate that there is not a ceasefire or a compromise or something that could go on there that would limit or eliminate the loss of life that is happening between Israel and Gaza at the moment. I know that. But I don't fully understand the situation. It's just not something that I have been overly informed about. And so what I would say right now is that, you know, what we may want to be hoping for is a peaceful settlement. I don't think that that precludes a two-state sort of situation. I think that we often think that because, you know, because maybe we have a premillennial dispensational belief that if Israel loses the land, that there is something that has gone awry in God's plan. Or we might say that Israel can't lose the land, and so we sort of support Israel and Israel as a secular nation keeping the territory that it currently has as a means of sort of fulfilling God's prophecy. And what I would say to that is this. Hasmonean dynasty prior to the, this would have been between, you know, let's say, the Jews reconstituting the land in Ezra's day and Nehemiah. And there was a space there before or during, really, Roman occupation where Israel had retaken and was largely an independent nation, roughly the same size as the Davidic Empire. And so my point there is that Israel has reconstituted the land in various ways. They have had a temple in various ways. Like, this was not, this is not a new thing. It's something that sort of recurs throughout history. And so as we think about those prophetic patterns, we may want to recognize that, okay, if Israel is to populate the land, it doesn't mean that Israel has to populate the land right now through the means that we have available. It doesn't mean that. It means that if God is going to bring this about, God will bring this about. And so I think that there's a couple of things that I just want to throw out there for folks. Number one, eschatology is a really difficult field. It's one that I have largely shied away from being an Old Testament guy. I've had that luxury. There's not a lot of eschatology in the Old Testament beyond pointing to Jesus. And so, you know, in some ways, I've dodged that bullet a little bit. But at the same time, eschatology is an important subject because it does point us toward what is going to be happening in the end times. Now, I am not a premillennial dispensationalist. I don't, I do think that there is going to be a time of tribulation. I think Matthew 24 and various other texts point to God's people going through difficult times. I think we see that throughout the scriptures. I'm not sure that I see a pre-tribulation rapture as the most logical conclusion to the end of the earth. At the same time, I would say I don't see those as to be particularly matters of orthodoxy. I get along with folks who are pre-trib rapture or post-trib rapture, all those other, you know, sort of variations. And so my thinking on this is, how do we read the scriptures? How do we think about the scriptures, not just from an eschatological mode? In other words, not through our eschatological models, but how do we read the scriptures beyond those eschatological models to understand all that God is doing in the world? How do we take the full counsel of God into account? So that's one. Our eschatological models are important, but they shouldn't drive the way that we see the world in every single case. I think particularly as we look at the specifics of those models, we can drown in the details. And we need to be careful not to do that. We need to be careful that we are retaining what I believe to be sort of an interesting Old Testament pattern of prophetic critique of nations, of those who are associated with God's people. That means that there need to be prophetic theological voices that come against the church, that come against Israel, that come against the other nations. We are a light in the darkness. We are voices crying out. And so as Christians, we are not part of the world. We are literally separate from it. We are sojourners and exiles in the words, you know, as we see in 1 Peter, we are citizens of heaven as we see in Philippians 3. We have become part of the commonwealth of God as we see in Ephesians 2. And so our citizenship truly is somewhere else. And that means that we speak differently. We think differently. We look differently. And so we have to be able to critique what is happening around the world from a biblical and theological perspective. Now it seems to me that the second thing we ought to note here is that if we lean too heavily into or too much into our eschatology, we run the risk of losing a presentist perspective. In other words, if we're constantly looking toward the future and asking ourselves, what will God do? There is a risk of us reading the present through a lens that is solely based on the future. And we need to be avoiding that. We are not done yet. The creation is still groaning. People are still the slaves to sin. We are still in a fallen and broken world. And while we should look forward in hope of something better, something different, the new creations and the new earth that God is going to create, the restoration of all things that God is going to bring about, we don't live there yet. And so, yes, our understanding of eschatology should influence the way we act in the present, but at the same time, we can't blind ourselves to what is actually going on in the present. And if we want folks like the people over in Israel, the nation of Israel, if we want them to come back to the Lord, what they need is not our support. What they need is the gospel. These are unsaved people, period. And whether God has a special, unique plan for them based on the Old Testament promises of, you know, covenant and land and all those kind of different promises that he made to the nation of Israel, even if that's your eschatological system, you simply can't deny that God is not going to be giving that system to a people who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ. Israel is not going to be reconstituted apart from the Davidic king who currently sits on a heavenly throne. They have to accept Jesus Christ. And so when we support Israel in a political sense, are we really encouraging Israel with the gospel? I think that's a question that each of us really need to wrestle with on our own. And I'm not going to give an answer to that, like say a hard yes or a hard no. What I tend to think is that we're privileging the politics over the gospel. In other words, we are concerned, and to some degree, to some significant extent, we are concerned that we are eschatological systems come true and that Israel keep the land, that this be sort of the end times, and that when we look at what's going on in Israel, we are stepping away from our theology.

The logical critiques from sharing the gospel with a group of people who are absolutely lost. And we're shying away from that in order to get political support to a nation that we believe is going to be reconstituted in the end times. But the reality is that that nation is simply not going to be reconstituted without Jesus Christ. And so we see evidences of this in the Old Testament. There are various Old Testament passages, Old Testament prophecies, that actually deal with this sort of separation of the faithful Israelites from the unfaithful Israelites. Being part of the covenant people did not necessarily mean that you were going to be saved. One of the passages that I would look at specifically in the Old Testament is Isaiah 65. And I would say that in this passage, what God is doing is not distinguishing between Israel and the nations, but between Israelites within Israel. So we see that there are some, as in verse 12, who do what is evil in the Lord's eyes and choose what he does not delight, versus those who are actually servants and the servants of the Lord within Israel. And so I think that even within the Old Testament, what we find, and that's just one passage, we could point to various others, but there are a number of different passages that really do discuss the idea of faithfulness as a necessity for being really and truly part of God's people. And so I think there's overall just some nuance that we're missing in our conversation. So my encouragement, and again, this kind of came about after my conversation with Jeremy, which was really thought-provoking and I think helpful and clarifying in a lot of ways for me. But what I would just really say is this. As we look at what's going on in Israel, we need to resist the temptation to take one side or another without really considering all of the facts that we can find that are available. If you're really interested in this issue, I would really recommend going out there and finding some strong data about what's really going on, really understanding how the Israelite government, which is not a religious group. By and large, many of these are secular Jews. And so you have to reckon with this idea and sort of, I think, detach the modern state of Israel from what we see in the scriptures. And so even if you're a dispensationalist, and even if you believe that Israel would be reconstituted, if that's your eschatological system, again, usually that's a dispensationalist or premillennial sort of perspective. The best thing we can possibly do is not root for the modern Israelite state. The best thing we can do is to proclaim the gospels to Jews who are lost and help them understand that the reconstitution of the temple or the elimination of foreigners from the land or peace in Israel, the only way that that's going to come about is through Jesus Christ. That kingdom is not going to be established through war. These conflicts with Hamas, these conflicts with other nations, these are the work of the normal sort of state-based restraining evil and protecting boundaries that all other nations do. This is not theologically remarkable, in other words. It doesn't have a ring to it where it's like, oh, yes, Israel is doing something special here. They're doing what every other nation does. They're doing what the United States did after 9-11, to some degree. They're protecting themselves against terror. And so that's not inappropriate, but it's also not something that should be attached to a particular theological significance. And so my point is just this. For Christians, we need to not lose sight in our support for Israel that really and truly what we do to support Israel or any other nation is to build up the body of Christ. And we build up the body of Christ by encouraging one another, by growing spiritually, by doing discipleship internal to the body of Christ, but we also do it by bringing new people into the body of Christ. Those are the two movements within the Great Commission that Christ gives his disciples at the end of Matthew 28. We are to baptize people into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is a new initial commitment to being committed to discipleship. But then we're also supposed to teach them to observe all Christ commanded. And that is sort of the second movement. So we're drawing people under Christ's authority and we're teaching them to live under Christ's authority. That is discipleship. And so we do that, we build up the body of Christ in those two ways, by building one another up and by converting new, new people to live underneath the authority of Christ. We do that for the world's sake. This is not something we do for ourselves or simply for ourselves. It's probably the best way to say it. We do it for the world's sake because the world needs to see an alternative. The world needs to see a light in the darkness. The world needs to see a city on a hill. We are that city on the hill. The church is the city on the hill. And so whatever we, whatever decision we may make about the politics of the day, whatever side you may land on, on, you know, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, whatever conflicted views you may have, if you have clean views, if you have, you know, very stern views about those, great. Enjoy the politics. Take a hard look at the situation. Come to a conclusion. I think that's all reasonable and that's all fantastic. But at the end of the day, no Christian, no Christian can question that the only real way to support Israel is to be the body of Christ, to build the body of Christ for Israel's sake and for the nation's sake. We are the church for the sake of the world. And that means that if we're really going to support nations like Israel, we have to go on the offensive with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have to be out there really proclaiming that gospel in word and deed so that the world can understand that there is an alternative to what the world is doing right now. And without that alternative, the world is just going to continue doing what the world does, which is coping with a broken world without Jesus Christ. So I just wanted to kind of throw some of those thoughts out there. I'm not siding one way or the other necessarily on the Israel debate. You know, obviously I have my own convictions, but that's not really what this is about. This is about the mission of the church and what is it that the church can and should be doing with regard to Israel. And how is it that we can really best feed into that situation? I don't believe that our best move is to feed in politically. It may be a move, but I don't think it's our best move, right? Because the church has a unique contribution that only it can make. And if we do not share Christ to the world, no one else is going to. If we do not share Christ with Israel, no one else is going to. There are a lot of nations who may come in and side with Israel politically, maybe give them military.

maybe support them politically, however that looks, but there is no one else on this planet save the church that is going to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the nation of Israel and with the rest of the nations of the world. The church is the only body of people capable of doing that, and we have been given a responsibility to do so. So hopefully some of these thoughts made sense. Some of these ideas hit home, and my just encouragement is don't get caught up in all the politics of the day to such an extent that we lose sight of our specific Christian mission and the way that we are to go about proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in word and deed in a broken world today. We'll see you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Finding uplifting news in today's headlines is often like searching for a needle in a haystack. At The Story Behind Podcast, we believe in the power of finding heartwarming tales and are happy to share empowering stories with you every week. Get inspired by the note a waitress received from a patron dining alone and even hear about how one VIP passenger made a hardworking pilot get emotional before his flight. To start listening to The Story Behind Podcast, visit lifeaudio.com.