As president of Christians for Israel International (www.c4israel.org), I often speak, preach, and teach from the Bible about Israel. People sometimes ask me, “Why are you so involved with Israel and the Jewish people? Is it a kind of hobby for you, like collecting stamps or playing golf? What is so special about Israel?” My answer is always, “Well, I hope that what I feel about Israel is similar to what God feels about them. God loves Israel. Jesus loves Israel. The Bible says so. And because I love Jesus, and I know that He loves me, I can’t help loving the people He loves.”
My involvement with Israel began when someone once said to me, “You know, there are many Christians who love ‘dead Jews.’ I replied, “I beg your pardon…‘dead Jews’?” “Yes,” he exclaimed, “the Jews of the past—Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, Paul, Peter, John, and all the others. The Jews of the Bible—Jews who are long gone.” He proceeded to say, “And then there are Christians who love Jews who are not yet born—the Jewish generation who will live in the prophetic future when Israel will be the center of the earth, and Jerusalem will be the city from which peace will flow out and fill the earth. “But who will stand with the Jewish people today? Who will love them in the name of Jesus? Who will remain at their side while the world strives against them? Who will plead with the Church to repent of her terrible past? Who will start reading the Scriptures again to discover what the real relationship is between Israel and the Church? What about the Church’s Jewish roots? What about our prophetic future together? While the Church and Israel might have very different views about who the Jew, Jesus, really is, the fact is this difference doesn’t mean much to the powers of darkness. Those powers hate both peoples of God—both who believe in the same God; those powers will persecute Bible-believing Christians just as much as they will the Jews and Israel. History makes this quite clear.”
What he said made a great impact and encouraged me to start thinking and asking questions, such as, “What has God to do with Israel…even today? Even after the vast majority of the Jewish people have rejected Jesus as their Messiah and as the Son of God?” These questions drove me to reread the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testament—God’s totally trustworthy Word that He has revealed to the Jewish people.
God Loves and Disciplines His Firstborn
The first thing I discovered was that while Jesus is God’s only begotten Son (see John 1:14), Israel is His firstborn son. When the children of Israel were oppressed slaves in Egypt and Pharaoh refused to let them go while systematically increasing their hardship in order to reduce their numbers, Moses and his brother Aaron sent Pharaoh this message: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Israel is My firstborn son, and I told you, “Let My son go, so he may worship Me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your first-born son’”(Exod. 4:22b-23). And that was what happened in the tenth plague that struck Egypt (see Exod. 12:29). Refusing to let God’s firstborn son go did indeed cost them their firstborn sons, as God had warned. For God loves the Jewish people as a father loves his child. The prophet Hosea records God’s emotions in the lament that begins: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son” (Hosea 11:1). God speaks as a father about His often disobedient and delinquent son, with all the conflicting emotions, from tender love to great anger, that a father can feel. Anyone with children of their own will understand these emotions. You love your children and will do anything for them, but their behavior can sometimes make your blood boil! And then you’ll speak harsh or sharp words, or words of warning, because you see that ultimately things will go terribly wrong if they continue to behave in that way. Out of concern and out of love, you speak words of correction, and possibly even take disciplinary action. As an old Dutch proverb says: If they won’t hear, they must feel!
One can hear the frustrated anger of the Father when He says, “But the more I called Israel, the further they went from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals [idols] and they burned incense to images” (Hosea 11:2). “I did everything possible for My son,” God says. “It was I who taught Ephraim [a term of endearment for Israel] to walk [just as a father teaches his children their first baby-steps] taking them by the arms [as a father takes toddlers who have fallen into his arms to comfort them]; but they did not realize [or recognize] it was I who healed them” (Hosea 11:3). In other words, God says, “I put plasters on their scratches and bruises, as an earthly father would do. But were they grateful? Absolutely not!” “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love” (Hosea 11:4a). Just like earthly parents, God used every means to express love to bring His people back to Himself. “I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11:4b). Like harnessed oxen pulling a plough, the people had sighed under the slavery of Egypt, driven along prescribed paths. But the Lord broke the yoke that harnessed them and freed His people from the slave drivers. He guided them across the Red Sea and into the desert (see Exod. 13–14), and there He provided for their needs with manna from Heaven and water from the rock. He led them from resting place to resting place, from oasis to oasis. Yes, He even provided meat in the form of quails (see Exod. 16–17:7). “I bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11:4b).
And then we hear the anger in His voice. “Will they not return to Egypt [back to slavery! That’s what they deserve, with their ingratitude!] and will not Assyria rule over them?” (Hosea 11:5a). What Assyria did to its prisoners of war is too cruel to describe on paper, although it is chiselled in the rocks where the Assyrian kings immortalized their horrendous deeds. And it is to Assyria that the ten tribes of Israel were finally led into captivity (see 2 Kings 17:23) “…because they refuse to repent. Swords will flash in their cities, will destroy the bars of their gates and put an end to their plans” (Hosea 11:5b-6). In other words, God says, “They can only blame themselves and their own behavior.” “My people are determined to turn from Me” (Hosea 11:7a).
Hosea, the prophet, adds his personal opinion: “Even if they call to the Most High, He will by no means exalt them” (Hosea 11:7b).
The Apple of God’s Eye
But once again, the love in the heart of the Father breaks out. You can’t look on with dry eyes, can you? No matter what your child, your son, has done, isn’t he still your son? Of course, he is. Therefore, God says, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim?” (Hosea 11:8a). Admah and Zeboiim were cities in the rift of the Dead Sea that were destroyed by fire from Heaven along with Sodom and Gomorrah, because of God’s wrath (see Deut. 29:23). “Can I do this to My own firstborn son?” God asks. Discipline him, yes! But reject him? Never! Will he not always remain your son, your firstborn, your own child? “My heart is changed within Me; all My compassion is aroused. I will not carry out My fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God and not man—the Holy One among you…” (Hosea 11:8b-9).
People can act with great cruelty, and the actions of the nations who came against God’s firstborn son, Israel, were just that—cruel. God says by the mouth of the prophet Zechariah, “I am very angry with the nations that feel secure. I was only a little angry, but they added to the calamity” (Zech. 1:15). God says, “I know how to find these nations! I will judge those nations!” The great judgment of God on the nations will eventually come, in accordance with what they have done to Israel, because Israel is the apple of God’s eye.
Your eye is the most sensitive part of your body. Merely flicking a finger near your eye is enough to make you recoil. When directors of horror movies really want to shock their audiences, they know what to do—they mutilate eyes, sometimes even slicing them with razors. If Israel is the apple of God’s eye, do you think that God will ignore any assault on Israel? Will He ignore the Holocaust, six million murdered Jews, one and a half million of whom were children? No, there will undoubtedly be judgment upon the nations. When one of the leading German, “God-is-dead” theologians, Dorothee Sölle, once said, “Since Auschwitz I cannot believe in God anymore,” a rabbi responded, “Since Auschwitz I can only still believe in God, not in man anymore.” One day judgment will come. As Zechariah 2:8-9 warns the nations that had plundered Israel, “…Whoever touches you [Israel] touches the apple of His eye—I will surely raise My hand against you….” In our attacks on Israel, we have not merely touched the apple of His eye; we have punched God directly in the eye, and cut the apple of His eye, His beloved people, to pieces.
For the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance. In a desert land He found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; He guarded him as the apple of His eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. The Lord alone led him; no foreign god was with him (Deuteronomy 32:9-12). Chastise Israel? Yes! Destroy Israel forever? Never! “I will not come in wrath. They will follow the Lord; He will roar like a lion. When He roars, His children will come trembling from the west” (Hosea 11:9b-10). “Out of the west,” Hosea the prophet says. It will not be from the Babylonian or Assyrian captivity, for these countries, from Israel’s point of view, are to the east and the north. “They will come trembling like birds from Egypt [to the south, but also the land of slavery, which can be anywhere in the world], like doves from Assyria [thus out of the east]. I will settle them in their homes, declares the Lord” (Hosea 11:11). Over the past hundred years, we have seen this happening before our very eyes.
Israel is God’s firstborn son. Its very existence is miraculous, for Abraham was too old and Sarah past childbearing years when Isaac was born. God Himself gave His firstborn son life (see Gen. 17:17; 18:10-11), creating a people for His name among all the nations of the world. God’s own people—through whom He would make Himself known to the whole world. Many times they were disciplined throughout their history, but abandoned and rejected? Never!
And now, Israel is returning to the land that God swore by an eternal covenant to give to them, the land of Canaan (see Ps. 105:7-11). God truly loves Israel.
Tags: covenants, firstborn son, Israel, Jews, Rev. Glashouwer
2,309 views
Thank You Lord Jesus through Israel, I have understanding your passion of love to all of us.