Because Of The Jews

"It isn't nonsense. It's covenant."

WE ARE all Rahab. We owe our life to the Jews. When the walls of Jericho fell, hers was the only house standing and those people in it, saved because of the mercy of the God of the Jews. All of this Gospel from Genesis to John’s Revelation is Jewish. It’s promises made to Israel. It’s Savior, Jesus Christ, God of them. When Pentecost came and tongues of fire sat upon each of them, they were 120 Jews in the capital city of the Jews, celebrating a Jewish holiday. Then, filled with the Spirit, Peter preached a sermon to those gathered in the streets and 3,000 Jews were saved.

Not until Peter had a dream of a sheet let down from heaven did the Gospel include us.

We are Rahab, a harlot, worshiping men and ideals and governments, as lost as a goose in a snowstorm, except for a story she’d heard, some 40 years old, that turned out to be true. The rumor of it terrified the people of Jericho. Rahab protected the Jews anyway, from those who sought their life. And they made her a promise to save all her household. Though she was what she was, born where she was, and raised as she was.

She didn’t deserve it, but God gave it. Because of the Jews.

We need to adopt her perspective and stay there. We need to listen to the Jews and stop trying to make them give it all up. “If they’d just get saved, they’d stop all that nonsense.”

It isn’t nonsense. It’s covenant, and I pray they never stop. Nobody, NOBODY, worships like the Jews. Nobody studies God’s Word like them. Nobody obeys like they do. Nobody prays as long or as much. They are continual at it. Nobody teaches their children Truth as faithfully. The Torah is Truth given to Israel, and from it, they see not only their history, but who God is to them today. What He was trying to accomplish amongst them when He took them out of Egypt and Babylon.

They speak Jesus all the time. All the time. Verses they’ve never read and won’t read because the Torah says never to take away or add to its words. Sound familiar?

It is their covenant of salvation. That’s what we miss. We don’t see that Jesus quoted it, explaining its promises. We miss He came to fulfill it, Matthew 5:17, and not to destroy it, said in the same verse. We miss that all His promises to us are duplicates of what He’s given them. We can’t see the size of God’s mercy extended to us, forgiveness we don’t deserve, for the beam in our eye (Matthew 7:5).

Jesus died on the cross for WHOSOEVER would believe – Jew or Gentile. NOT to eliminate them and insert us. NOR to get rid of His ancestry. He WASN’T altering how they believe but saw where history would take them, from the fall of the temple to the Holocaust of World War II. And He’s loved them through all of it as they became the people they are today.

Redeemed by their God and Savior who we’ve been allowed to embrace.


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com