If you love Jesus, you should love the Jew!

The front cover of the May 2016 edition of the Israel Today magazine neatly – and humorously - sums up the answer to this question. It's a cartoon depicting a protestor advocating a boycott of Israeli products and a man in a white robe (presumably Jesus) holding an open Bible. The protestor angrily points at the book, declaring: "This is also 'Made in Israel'!"

Need I say more? Without Israelis, we have nothing – absolutely nothing – of eternal value in our lives. They gave us the Bible, along with the authors of all but perhaps two of its 66 books. And it is through the Jews that we have the Messiah, on whose words much of Western civilisation has been built.

Our Jewish Roots

Gentile believers owe everything to Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, and so much to the Apostle Paul, the Hebrew of Hebrews who answered God's call to bring us the Gospel. Fortunately, Paul warned the Roman Christians against arrogance in thinking they could cut themselves off from the Hebraic roots of their faith. To such he thundered: "You do not support the root, but the root supports you!" (Rom 11:18) It is only by God's grace that we have been "grafted in" as a wild shoot to the olive tree that is Israel so that we "now share in its nourishing sap" (v17), the implication being that, if we disown our relationship with Israel, we will dry up and die!

It is interesting that the section of this letter dealing specifically with Israel is immediately followed by an appeal not to conform any longer "to the pattern of this world" in our thinking (Rom 12:1f). Those who have become convinced by the world's propaganda that Israel is a pariah deserving of international boycott and sanctions have swallowed a poisonous lie and are certainly not living according to the truth of the gospel.

Clearly, disciples of Jesus down the ages have worshipped the God of Israel, who was first revealed to the world through the Jewish people and is now made known to all through Christ, who told the woman at the well that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). And although called to be an Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul nevertheless emphasised that the gospel was to be preached "to the Jew first" (Rom 1:16).

God's Eternal Faithfulness

Our God is the God of Israel! That means that their history is also our history. We have not replaced them in God's purposes, as some suggest, supposedly because they rejected Jesus. For one thing, it would be against God's character to break his promise. And in any case, many of the Jews of Jesus' day loved him (Matt 26:5). If that hadn't been the case, we would never have had the Church, originally made up almost entirely of Jews who heard about the wonders of God on the Day of Pentecost (Shavuot) which drew Hebrews from around the known world to Jerusalem for the feast.

God declared his undying love for Israel through Jeremiah when he said: "I have loved you with an everlasting love..." (Jer 3:.3) And the New Covenant, also spoken of by the prophet (Jer 31:31), would essentially be with the 'House of Israel', though indeed this was to be greatly augmented by the inclusion of Gentiles "grafted in" to the olive tree thanks to the untiring efforts of St Peter and St Paul, among others.

End Time Return

But there'll come a day, shortly before the return of Jesus, when we will witness a huge increase in the number of Jews acknowledging his Messiahship (Rom 11:26). And this is something we Gentiles need to be part of – assisting with the end time re-gathering of the Jewish people, both physically to their land and spiritually to their Lord.

The Bible clearly teaches that Israel will be restored in the final days before Jesus' return, and that this will be in two stages – first, to the land (Ezek 36:24) and then to the Lord (Ezek 36:26, Jer 31:33) when he would give them a "new heart". Zechariah says the Messiah would directly intervene when the world's armies attack Jerusalem (Zech 14:2), that he would stand on the Mount of Olives (v4) as the angels predicted after his ascension (Acts 1:11), and that those who pierced him would mourn for him as for a firstborn son (Zech 14:10).

If it is the case that the final days of this age will be wound up in this way, then the eyes of all Christians should be on Israel as they watch God's restoration plan unfold and warn the world of impending judgment. Many pastors believe that a concern for Israel is simply the lot of a few like-minded souls. But no! We are all part of Israel if we worship the God of Israel, who has made himself known through his beloved Son, and we all have a duty and responsibility to love and support these brothers-in-the-flesh of Jesus. "For whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matt 25:40). God will even judge the nations on this basis. "For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you [Israel] will perish; it will be utterly ruined" (Isa 60:12).

Challenge to Christians

If Israel's restoration is among the key signs of the imminent return of Messiah, then it surely has to become a priority for Christians to love, support and encourage her – through prayer (Ps 122:6; Isa 62:6), preaching the gospel, practical help such as facilitating their return to the land and financially supporting their poor (especially Holocaust survivors) and through defending their political right to exist and defend themselves.

Jesus died on the cross as the innocent "Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) but will return in great splendour, still as the sacrificed Lamb, but also as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Rev 5:5) and "the Root and Offspring of David" (Rev 22:16). Many avoid preaching on the 'end times' because they know they will have to bring Israel into the equation, or else explain it away. If the UK Church stood foursquare behind Israel (by which I don't mean they need to support their every political move), I don't believe we'd witness nearly as much anti-Semitism here as we are doing today.

That Israel is tied up with the end times is as plain from the Scriptures as a pikestaff. We should surely be studying the Bible with one hand and a newspaper with the other, and acting upon what the Word says we should believe, do and teach in light of the signs of the times, which the men of Issachar observed so diligently in their day (1 Chron 12:32). Psalm 83, for example, written some 3,000 years ago, speaks so clearly of today's Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thus: "Come," they [Israel's enemies] say, "let us destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more" (v4).

Last, but not least – in fact it is perhaps lesson one in answering this big question – is the urgent need to apply the promise God made to Abraham, that he would bless those who blessed him and bring judgment on those who cursed him, adding that "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Gen 12:3).

Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has urged support for Israel on the basis that "if it goes down, we all go down". He argues that the Jewish state is at the cutting edge in the battle between militant Islam and the West and, in a Times article, concludes: "Israel is a fundamental part of the West which is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined."¹

If you love Jesus, you should love Israel.

References

1 London Times, 17 June 2010, also quoted in Gardner, C, 2015. Peace in Jerusalem. www.olivepresspublisher.com.