This Book

"Because this book is a book of promises to Israel."

THIS BOOK is a book of promises to Israel. We, the Gentile church, have taken it and made them exempt from it. We justify it saying, through their blindness. They just don't see Jesus. But the blindness is ours. Because this book is a book of promises to Israel, and Jesus is King of them; and we are grafted in.

“For if you were cut out of a field olive-tree, and against the natural use were united to a good olive-tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be united again with the olive-tree which was theirs?” (Romans 11:24 BBE)

We are the lost sheep, the prodigal son that the Shepherd, the Father longed for. That is Jesus' implication in both stories. It isn't that some of us Gentiles are the son who stayed and some of us, the prodigal. We are not the 99 and that addict, that criminal, is who is lost. That's how we, Gentiles, have seen it. Instead, Jesus was telling the Jews they were in the Father's house, they have access to all He is, but the prodigal, the Gentiles, who had gone to a far country, were coming home. He would sacrifice the fitted calf to celebrate. That calf pictured His soon death.

Jesus is the Shepherd who carried the lost sheep on His shoulders while the 99, Israel, remained in the pasture.

"Why," we have asked, "is He not worried about the 99?" And we've preached the answer, as them being bored with Him. Or unaccepting. No, the truth is the opposite: They know Him.

"Oh, no," we argue, "Paul said all that about them in his letters." That they are blind, relying on circumcision and rules of Law. He did say that, and it was true of some then, in that day. It is true of some today. But let's balance it. There are Christian churches who forbid women to speak because of a misunderstanding of what Paul said, and Christian churches who say there are no more apostles and prophets, and Jesus no longer heals the sick. They are wrong, too. But hear what a well-spoken rebbe said, "Too much religion, not enough God."

This is a relationship, walking every day with Hashem.

So returning to the parables, which is it? If Israel is the 99, the son who is still home, and God has embraced the lost Gentiles, then are we "in" but they are out? Paul himself says no. “Do not be uplifted in pride over the branches (Romans 11:18).” And “How much more will these, the natural branches, be united again with the olive-tree which was theirs (Romans 11:24)?” And they have been.

"We were chosen to be beacons of moral light for the world," says Rebbe YY Jacobson.

"We are an eternal people," speaks a Holocaust survivor.

"He didn’t want us to be slaves and Him as Master. He is King but didn’t want us as subjects. He wanted to be Father, to be with us," instructs a woman Jew.

And then there's Rom Braslovski, a young man held hostage by Hamas, a Hebrew word meaning "violence". He was told they would feed him and stop torturing him if he'd convert to Islam. He replied, " I was born Jewish and I will die Jewish. I believe in all my heart in Moshe Rabeinu. And I don’t know who is Muhammad. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what is the Koran. I’m not converting. And I will die as a Jew … And if I will get out, if you will let me out from here, also my children, that I will bring to the world, they also will live and die as Jews.”

So did Jesus. And we owe Him our salvation. That He came for us although we condemned His people. They are His, and we are His because of them. We need to act like it.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash


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