STAND FIRM: Get Israel Right By Provoking to Jealousy
God is not done with Israel, nor did the church replace her. We are grafted into the promises of Israel and a reconciliation to God through Christ is promised for Israel. I’ve written several articles on this focused on what the church has gotten wrong about Israel, but its important to point out how we can get Israel right now and in the future.
In the most recent article in this series, I wrote how we can get Israel right through missions — not to Israel but by completing the spread of the gospel to the nations. I also mentioned that sharing the gospel to Jews was tricky, but God gave an evangelism formula for Jews in Scripture and, of course, using that formula would be getting Israel right.
Before giving the formula, I want to share why Jews may be the most difficult people group to evangelize. First, there’s the whole supernatural hardening of the heart that Rom. 11:25 addresses. That will not change, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t Jews who have been saved or will be saved. Remember, all the disciples were Jews. So was Paul. Nearly all the first followers of Jesus were Jews. Throughout the 2,000 years since the first coming of Jesus, Jews have been saved. Right now, more Jews are coming to Christ than at any other point in history. Jews do get saved on this side of the return of Jesus. There are whole Messianic Jewish congregations and movements.
The difficulty isn’t only because of the hardening of heart. The years of Christianity getting Israel wrong has led Jews to have animosity toward Christians. Jews living in Israel today get along better with Muslims than Christians. There has been a long history of Jewish persecution at the hands of Christianity. Remember, the teachings of the church are seen as building the foundation that led to the Holocaust. One of the worst eyesores in the historical relationship between Jews and the church is the Crusades. Though the Catholic church’s “mission” was to take back Jerusalem from Muslims, Jews were often slaughtered by Christians.
There are many hurdles in reaching Jews with the gospel. Another aspect is that some feel as if we “stole” their story. Think about it — we claim their history, stories and heroes as our own. And it’s through this reality that God’s formula works. Paul wrote: “Did God’s people stumble and fall beyond recovery? Of course not! They were disobedient, so God made salvation available to the Gentiles. But he wanted his own people to become jealous and claim it for themselves. Now if the Gentiles were enriched because the people of Israel turned down God’s offer of salvation, think how much greater a blessing the world will share when they finally accept it. I am saying all this especially for you Gentiles. God has appointed me as the apostle to the Gentiles. I stress this, for I want somehow to make the people of Israel jealous of what you Gentiles have, so I might save some of them” (Rom. 11:11-14 NLT).
Yes, the formula is that Gentile followers of Christ would expose the gospel to Jews by provoking Jews to jealousy. Amazingly, Paul wasn’t sharing a new revelation rather God revealed that this is the system all along all the way back to the time of Moses. In Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, this prophetic statement tells what will happen to Israel. It was predicted nearly 1500 years before the first advent of Jesus: “Jeshurun (Israel) grew fat and kicked; filled with food, they became heavy and sleek. They abandoned the God who made them and rejected the Rock their Savior. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God — gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your ancestors did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth. The Lord saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters. ‘I will hide my face from them,’ he said, ‘and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful. They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding…’” (Deut. 32:15-21 NIV).
The NIV translation phrases verse 21 in a way nice to us Gentiles by just calling us a nation without understanding, but other versions do the verse more justice by calling us fools. God’s plan was to give the gospel to fools (us) to make Israel jealous. That is why the Apostle Paul writes in Rom. 11:25 that Gentiles shouldn’t become conceited or arrogant. Though we’re blessed to have heard and believed the gospel, it’s because we’re fools.
So, we’re the fools. I’m glad to be that if it means I’m able to hear the gospel — believe, be acquitted and be reconciled to God.
Over the past several years, as I’ve been on this journey of rediscovering God’s plan for Israel and our relationship to them, I’ve heard about this “provoking to jealousy strategy” but haven’t fully understood it. This summer I was able to see it in action. My wife sat next to a Jewish girl on our flight from London to Israel. The girl was in her early 20s and was headed home after being in the States. As they talked, my wife shared that we were going to Israel on vacation. The girl asked why we would want to see her country. Amanda then shared that it was because the girl’s history was also our history as Christians. Yes, we wanted to see the Christian sites, but also the Old Testament sites. This idea blew the girl away. She had never heard a Christian show respect and interest in Old Testament Jewish locations. Throughout the trip, Amanda kept in touch with her. She was so curious and a bit jealous. God had planted a seed.
As we visited modern Jewish historical sites on the trip, we saw the same response of Jews at those sites. One Jewish man was in tears that we American evangelical Christians would care enough to honor a memorial and video from the Syrian War in 1972.
We can get Israel right by following God’s plan of being the fools that provoke them to jealousy.
— Jake is a state missionary and would love to share about the work in Northwest Arkansas and encourage your church to stand firm. (standfirmministries.com)
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Jake McCandless
Jake McCandless authors a weekly column titled, Stand Firm and Live Epic, through which he seeks to encourage the modern church to not just survive, but thrive in current times. He also addresses many end-times topics.
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