Lesson 5

Jesus and Ancient Israel

brooklyn-museum-reconstruction-of-jerusalem-and-the-temple-of-herod-reconstitution-36bf74.

(Brooklyn Museum - Reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Herod - James Tissot)

NOTE: The Ancient Israel of the Bible and the modern-day State of Israel are two different realities and we should not confuse them. To highlight this difference, the descendants of Jacob/Israel who lived as citizens of Ancient Israel are called Israelites. Today, the citizens of the State of Israel are called Israelis. When in this lesson I speak of Israel, I always mean Ancient Israel.

Synopsis

The Bible teaches us that God created us to marry him. After the fall, the biblical text narrates how God does this. He begins his plan of salvation by calling one person—Abram. His promises structure the rest of the biblical story. It is through their fulfillment that God will reestablish our covenantal communion with him. He chose Israel because of his love for Abram. As his direct descendants, the Israelites were the heir and beneficiary of his blessing. Israel's identity was to be God’s first-born son, that is, his chosen instrument so that the other nations could also find salvation. God established her to be the nation that was to receive his Son and form him in his humanity. This is what makes Israel unique. No other nation in the history of mankind has received a greater mission. To be able to do this, God gave her special gifts, such as his presence in the glory cloud, the covenant which made Israel his first-born son, and the law which taught the people how to live as his children. Unfortunately, the Bible is also the story of Israel’s continuous failure to live up to God’s standards. Everyone sins against God. But it is also the story of his steadfast love and fidelity. Despite our rebellion, he remains faithful to his original plan.

Learning Objectives

You will have successfully completed this lesson when you understand and can:

Explain why God called Abram.
Describe Israel's identity and mission.
List and describe God's gifts to Israel so that she could fulfill her mission.
Explain why Israel was a holy nation, consecrated to God.

Introduction

In the course on the history of salvation, we saw how God created us so that we could dwell with him and with each other, living in a loving communion that would last forever. In other words, God created us to marry him so that we could become a part of his family. We find this idea throughout the entire Bible. It first appears at the beginning, in the Book of Genesis, albeit in an obscure language that is difficult to understand. But it is explicitly expressed at the end, in the Book of Revelation:

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready. (Rv 19:6–7)

We—that is, the redeemed humanity—are the bride mentioned in this passage. A second passage in Revelation repeats the same idea:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.” (Rv 21:1–3)

These excerpts show how God, at the end of time, will fulfill his original plan for mankind. Unfortunately, our first parents rejected his marriage proposal and rebelled against him, as we read in Gn 3. In the chapters that follow, we read how the subsequent generations followed their bad example and also rebelled against God (Cain’s sin, Noah and Ham’s sin, the sin of the Tower of Babel, etc.).

This sets up the plot for the rest of the biblical story. These first eleven chapters end like a cliffhanger as we find humanity divided and scattered over the face of all the earth, instead of living in harmony with God and each other as he had intended. Although we were given some reason for optimism in Gn 3:15:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your seed and her seed;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.

This situation should leave the reader wondering whether there is any hope left for us. How will God overcome the people’s sin and rebellion? We must continue reading to find out.

Abram’s Mission

The passage right after this cliffhanger changes tone dramatically.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.” (Gn 12:1–3)

This crucial moment marks the beginning of our redemption. God begins his plan of salvation by calling one person—Abram—and telling him to go forth out of his land. In return, he promises to make his name great and give him three things: a new land, descendants (at this time Abram had no children of his own), and a blessing for all peoples.

These promises structure the rest of the biblical story. The books from Exodus to Joshua describe how Abram’s descendants obtain the land, fulfilling the first promise. The books of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles recount the story of the Davidic Kingdom, which fulfills the second promise. And finally, the New Testament reveals how God fulfills in Jesus the third and most important of the promises—that of the blessing.

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. (Lk 24:50–51)

It is through the fulfillment of these promises that God will overcome the crisis of our rebellion and reestablish our covenantal communion with him. In the end, the Promised Land will be a type that prefigures our true promised land in Heaven. And the Kingdom of David will typify the establishment of God’s Kingdom.

Why did God choose Abram to begin his rescue mission? We read in the Book of Wisdom that although the whole world had fallen into sin, he was a righteous man.

She, when the nations were sunk in universal wickedness,

knew the righteous man [Abram], kept him blameless before God,

and preserved him resolute against pity for his child. (Wisdom 10:5)

But God did not pick him for his own sake, but rather for the benefit of all of us.

The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” (Gn 18:17–19)

Abram’s mission was to teach his children to “to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.” At this point in the Bible, we still don’t know how; but by doing this, Abram would in some way enable God to fulfill his promise.

Israel’s Identity

Moving a few centuries forward in the story of the Bible, we then come to the account of the exodus. God liberates the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from slavery in Egypt and establishes a special relationship with them. In Ex 4, he calls Israel his firstborn son.

Thus says the LORD: Israel is my son, my firstborn. (Ex 4:22)

Then, in chapter 19, he offers to establish a covenant with the Israelites, establishing them as his own possession among all peoples.

Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.” (Ex 19:5–6)

Why does God privilege Israel in this way? What about the other nations? Isn’t he being unfair? No, God is not being unfair. First of all, it is an historical fact that Israel is God’s firstborn son—that is, she was the first nation to enter into a covenantal relationship with him and become part of his family. Why Israel? It certainly wasn’t because of her own merits. She wasn’t the greatest or holiest nation around.

The LORD, your God, has chosen you from all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people specially his own. It was not because you are more numerous than all the peoples that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you; for you are really the smallest of all peoples. It was because the LORD loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn to your ancestors, that the LORD brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. (Dt 7:6-9)

God chose Israel because of his love for Abraham. As his direct descendants, the Israelites were the heir and beneficiary of God’s covenantal blessing given to Abraham. But this does not mean that God does not care about the other nations. On the contrary, he loves all nations and wants all of them to become a part of his family. That is why he chose Abraham in the first place, as we saw above.

Israel is to be God’s chosen instrument so that the other nations may also find salvation. This is her identity. Just as the firstborn children are supposed to help their parents raise their younger siblings, so too is Israel supposed to help God raise the other nations. How? By keeping “the ways of the Lord by doing what is right and just” (Gn 18:19). By doing this, she is to teach the other nations by her example. That is why the prophets call Israel a light for all nations.

I, the LORD, have called you for justice,

I have grasped you by the hand;

I formed you, and set you

as a covenant for the people,

a light for the nations. (Is 42:6)

It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,

to raise up the tribes of Jacob,

and restore the survivors of Israel;

I will make you a light to the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. (Is 49:6)

Israel’s Mission

If Israel’s identity is to be God’s first-born son, what is her mission? God formed Israel to be the nation in which his very own Son would come into the world. To understand the meaning and importance of this, we need to consider the implications of the Incarnation.

As Christians, we believe that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity truly became man. That is, Jesus didn’t just appear to be a man—as some heresies have falsely claimed—he was a real person, like us in everything except sin. Now every person who has ever existed has lived in a specific time and place, and was formed by the culture they grew up in. The same was true for the Son of God. We know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Galilee.

They returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. (Lk 2:39–40)

Thus, his human identity was formed by first-century Jewish culture. If, on the contrary, Jesus had been born among the Aztecs, he would have been formed by their culture because he would have participated in their unholy religious ceremonies involving human sacrifices. Likewise, if he had lived in America during the 1960s, he would have been exposed to “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.” And if he had grown up in communist China, he would have been forced to learn atheistic slogans at school. These sinful structures would have shaped Jesus’ identity, since culture play such an important role in this. Something similar would have happened if Jesus had been born in any other nation in the history of mankind, except for Ancient Israel. What makes Israel so special?

Ancient Israel is unique among all nations (even modern-day Israel) because she was founded not by any group of human beings, but by God himself. Precisely because God the Father didn’t want his Son to grow up in and be formed by a sinful culture, he established his own nation for this purpose. Because Jesus was born in Israel, instead of reading all kinds of books, he grew up reading a holy book—the Bible. And, instead of singing sinful songs, he sang holy songs—the Psalms. And rather than participating in unholy religious ceremonies he only took part in ceremonies that were pleasing to God because they had been prescribed by God himself.

God formed Israel and gave her the special mission to receive his Son and form him in his humanity. This is what makes her unique. No other nation in the history of mankind has received a greater mission. That is why God charged Abraham to teach his children, “to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice” (Gn 18.19). And why he told Moses to tell the people: “if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples” (Ex 19:5). Through Israel, he would bless all his other children, fulfilling the promise he had given to Adam and Eve in the Protoevangelium.

God’s Gifts for Israel

It is a basic spiritual principle that when God gives someone a mission, he always gives them the graces they need to fulfill it. So, God also gave Israel special gifts so that she could fulfill her mission. Paul mentions these gifts in his letter to the Romans when he speaks of Israel’s election. There he lists the special gifts Israel received:

They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen. (Rom 9:4–5)

By “sonship” Paul means something other that just the generic sonship that all human beings share for being created by God in his likeness and image. Israel’s relationship with God is unique because the Israelites entered into a covenantal relationship with him. That is why God calls Israel his first-born son, as we saw above.

By “glory” Paul is referring to God’s special presence among his people. Because Israel was God’s first-born son, he sent the glory cloud as a visible sign of his presence.

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. (Ex 40:34; cf. 1 Kgs 8)

By “covenants” Paul had in mind the covenants established between God and Abraham, Moses, and David, by which the Israelites became a part of his family in a special way.

By the “law” Paul signifies the Torah—that is, the first five books of the Jewish Bible which contain the Ten Commandments and other decrees given by God to Israel.

He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his ordinances. (Ps 147:19–20)

By “worship” Paul means everything God directly revealed to Israel in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy about how they were to worship him (eg. sacrifices, feasts, and priesthood).

And finally, by “promises” Paul is speaking of the future gifts God would give Israel, such as the new covenant (see Jer 31), a new heart (see Ez 36), and a new creation (see Is 65–66).

All of these gifts were given so that Jesus could be “of their [Jewish] race, according to the flesh” as Paul wrote to the Romans. But as we saw in the previous section, Jesus wasn’t just a Jew in that he was a biological descendant of Abraham. He was a Jew in that his human personal identity had been formed by his experience of these things.

A Holy Nation

No other nation in the history of mankind has ever been treated this way by God. Because of her unique mission, Israel had to be a holy nation, set apart from the other nations. In other words, Israel was consecrated to God. This idea appears throughout the Bible, for example, in the book of Deuteronomy:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. (Dt 14:2)

The Bible teaches us that contact with God requires holiness. However, the biblical concept of holiness is more than just moral goodness. We often translate the Greek word hagios as “holy” or “holiness,” but its literal meaning is “set apart” or “consecrated.”

Just as God is holy—that is, separated from this world—so too must the people and things that come into close contact with him be set apart or consecrated. This doesn’t mean that the world is evil, but just that it isn’t God. When something is consecrated to God it belongs to him and may no longer be used for ordinary things. The altar in a church, for example, is consecrated. It would therefore be a sacrilege to use it as an ordinary desk or a dinner table. We can find many examples of this in the Bible. For example, when God met with the people on Mt. Sinai, they had to first consecrate themselves before they could approach him.

And the Lord said to Moses, “Lo, I am coming to you in a thick cloud that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you for ever… Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments, and be ready by the third day; for on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set bounds for the people round about, saying, ‘Take heed that you do not go up into the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death’…” So Moses went down from the mountain to the people, and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. (Ex 19:9–14)

Similarly, the Ark of the Covenant was so holy that no one was allowed to touch it.

Israel’s Failure

Unfortunately, the story of the Bible is also the story of Israel’s continuous failure to live up to God’s standards. In this story, everyone sins against God without exceptions. The Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sin. All their descendants sin, because at some point during their 430 years there they forget about God and lose their identity. As a result, they become enslaved to Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods.

Moses sins and therefore cannot enter the Promised Land. The people also sin in the desert. Despite all the miracles God performs in their favor, the continuously complain against him and Moses and repeatedly want to return to Egypt. The judges in the Book of Judges sin and all of the kings, starting with David and Solomon, sin and break the covenant. Even the religious leaders in Jesus’ times are sinful people and therefore reject the promised Messiah.

Fortunately, the Bible is not just the story of our failure. It is also the story of God steadfast love and fidelity. Despite our rebellion, he remains faithful to his original plan of bringing us into his family.

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