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Gal 6:16 All who walk by this standard are the true
Israel of God--his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them! (The
Message)
Greetings! May the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ lead our
hearts to knowledge, understanding and love based upon the principles of His
mercy and grace. I feel it is incumbent upon us to also talk about how the
Bible understands “Israel”. Let me just say right off the bat, I love the
great nation of Israel and indeed I am grateful to God almighty for them. The
story of Israel is really a story about God’s love and insistent grace upon the
human race.
God created man in His own image and likeness, and afterwards,
man’s image and likeness became marred, and he found himself in a state of sin.
But God had a plan to restore man to his former glory. But first, He had to
reveal sin for what it was; He had to create a mirror that would reveal sin
inside man’s nature; he called the mirror the Law (Rom 7:13)!
Then He bequeathed this mirror to His chosen people (Ex 13:9; Lev 27:34), the
people of Israel who are also the natural seed of Abraham; these were His
chosen nation through whom the whole world would be saved (Gen 12:1-3). God
loved His chosen people and He revealed His Law and Himself to them. From then
on, every Law and every interaction God had with them would be a ‘type’ and
‘shadow’ of what was going to take place when the Messiah had come, at the time
of the New Covenant.That means, even Israel itself being called “God’s
chosen people” or “my people” (Ex 3:10; Is 65:8-10) was also a
type and shadow, the reality of it is only found in Christ Jesus (Col 2:17)!
Hang
on a sec!
I know to a lot of people this is going to sound like what the
theologians call “Replacement Theology” where some people teach
that the church has replaced Israel in the economy of God. I truly do not
subscribe to that teaching, however, in this New Covenant God chooses people
out of the Israel pool and the Gentile pool to create a third group, the
Ekklesia, the church… the “Israel of God” according to Galatians. So Israel as
a nation has not been replaced, but the concept of OT Israel has been extended
to the adoption of believing gentiles. But I would like to invite you to stay with
me for a while here. The church has continued to believe blindly that
the physical nation of Israel is still God’s chosen people today even apart
from the New Covenant of the Blood of Jesus Christ… and this is a grave
error!
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Remember that believing gentiles are also “a holy nation”
(1 Peter 2:9). Jesus says to His church “You have not chosen Me, but I HAVE CHOSEN YOU…”
Yes, Israel was ‘God’s chosen people’ in the OT, but what about the church in
the NT? It is not right for the church to worship Israel; we are supposed to
love them just like we love the Iraqis. It is true that “the gifts of God are
irrevocable”, and that they were blessed by God… but as pertaining sonship,
they also need Jesus Christ just as we do.
TO BE CONTINUED >>>
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