Welcome to Jerusalem Studio!
Today we make an exception and have a Bible study.
I will present a topic that should be important to all Christians -
blessing Israel.
Should we bless Israel?
If yes, then how, and on what grounds?
This is a question of extreme complexity
and it comes up now and again.
Some say: We cannot bless Israel as it does this and that.
We cannot bless it because of its wrongdoings
or actions that do not agree with us.
They should give the Palestinians their state etc
People seek for secular excuses so that we didn't have to bless Israel.
Many think that way. But for us, Christians,
the issues of blessing Israel cannot be so unequivocally clear,
that we would have no answer.
We cannot get entangled in these secular arguments,
but must find a biblical perspective regarding Israel.
We must find a comprehensive perspective regarding Israel,
with biblical instructions,
and form our positions based on that.
When talking about blessing Israel
I know a lot of people whose opinions are fickle.
Some base their teaching on one Bible verse only
and then follow it.
Others look for a wider perspective and the blessing is done selectively.
The Bible gives us clear guidelines in several passages
regarding God's actions, how He has called us to act,
and what He called Israel to do when they wandered in the desert
and exercised Old Testament worship.
How does that pertain to us, the New Testament church,
and to our views?
We will begin to unravel this from Exodus 19:5-6.
"If you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant,
then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people;
for all the earth is Mine.
And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’
These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
We notice that the promise God gave to the people of Israel
was not automatic. It was conditional.
"If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant,
then you shall be ..."
Promises regarding the land come after that.
God expected obedience from His people,
reciprocity to act based on His will
and the commandments He gave to His people.
If we keep reading the Bible we will easily notice
that Israel's actions and following God's commandments
did not really go according to God's will.
On quite a few occasions they strayed from His commands,
and based on reciprocity God executed His conditional promise:
You will not be able to habit that land on permanent basis.
Regarding the issue of continuity the promise God gave to Israel
definitely included the right to live in a certain country.
Their wrongdoings led to them being taken into exile,
as we read from the Bible.
Deuteronomy 11:26-28 is very clear about it.
“Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse:
the blessing, if you obey
the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today;
and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God,
but turn aside from the way which I command you today,
to go after other gods which you have not known."
Before Joshua took over after Moses and crossed the Jordan River
to conquer the land of Kanaan
he got clear messages about how to proceed
and communicated them to the people.
Moses gave them
a strong eschatological package of blessings and curses.
Considering it is 3500 years old,
some of it concerns times that even we have yet to see.
Deuteronomy 31:28-29
holds an extremely important message to the people of Israel
as to how God wanted them to act
and what would follow if they did not do as told.
"Gather to me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers,
that I may speak these words in their hearing
and call heaven and earth to witness against them.
For I know that after my death you will become utterly corrupt,
and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you."
And now follows the eschatological culmination:
"And evil will befall you in the latter days,
because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord,
to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.”
Someone might ask how does that relate to blessing Israel
from our Christian perspective? It does.
In this issue of blessing we must also consider
how God himself has dealt with His people.
It is not just about how we want to deal today.
We must consider the biblical perspective in everything.
I could paraphrase the first sentence from Exodus that I read before.
"Since you have not obeyed My voice and not kept My covenant,
you shall not be a special treasure to Me above all people;
but you will be a people equal to all other peoples."
This is the scenario that unfortunately fell upon the people of Israel.
They went against commandments they received from God.
Moses passed them on to them on quite a few occasions.
They followed other gods and intermarried with Canaanites.
They got mixed with other nations of whom God had said:
When you cross the Jordan River, chase all the inhabitants away!
Canaanites practiced idolatry in all its possible forms,
which was an abomination to God.
The Lord wanted to protect His people from that
and keep them spiritually and racially clean,
so that unhealthy elements would not enter in
and bring along unhealthy forms of worship.
That scenario actually came to pass
and that's why Israel had to answer for its actions.
The blessing, however, was given already
while they were wandering in the desert.
It was given when Aaron, the first high priest was initiated,
and his sons followed after him.
Priesthood, a holy nation separated unto God,
called to demonstrate awareness of God,
and perform all the necessary sacrifices.
The Aaronic blessing we always talk about,
and just as in all my speaking engagements
I call people to join in with it, is found in Numbers 6:24-27.
It begins a few verses earlier.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying,
‘This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them:
“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”’
In the end they are told:
“So they shall put My name on the children of Israel,
and I will bless them.”
God was committed to act according to that blessing,
when it was proclaimed over His people.
He will bless them when that blessing is read over them.
It seems that the Aaronic blessing
is a bit out of context with the rest of the Bible.
It is quite odd that in previous verses
the topics are sacrifices and Nazirite promises,
and the next chapter addresses consecration sacrifices.
And in the midst of all this is a text
that seems entirely out of context,
yet is always mentioned when talking about blessing Israel.
Let's read Genesis 12:1-3.
We are returning to the beginning
that is the foundation for Israel's blessing.
The blessing process was initiated in Abraham's time.
We will go back in time about 4000 years.
At that time Abraham was still called Abram.
Now the Lord had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country, From your family
And from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you
And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Abram was then about 75-years-old
and was commanded to leave the Ur of the Chaldeans.
His father Terah served other gods according to the Bible.
Suddenly Abram was told to get up and separate himself
from the society he had been part of
and go to a different land God was going to show him.
God's message had to be compelling, whether it came through a prophet
or however God wanted to relay the message,
as it resulted in Abram's obedience.
He went toward Haran, which is modern Turkey,
and arrived later in the Land of Israel.
The blessing was given already then, if Abraham was going to be obedient.
We know that he was,
because he left in obedience to the commandment.
The promise to make him a great nation came
when he was still childless and already quite old.
He still believed it.
The original text says there that great nations will come of you.
It was quite a consoling promise.
We could still imagine
some seeds of unbelief in Abraham's mind,
but he obeyed and left.
The ending "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”
takes us through the seed of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob etc,
towards the Messianic promise.
Abraham or Judaism
cannot contain a blessing for all the nations of the world.
It can come only through Messiah.
Most important here is the Messianic promise,
which applies to all nations, not just the Jews.
The topic of blessing no longer concerns just Israelites
but through the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
it applies to all nations.
It will expand our understanding about our later question
regarding why do we, New Covenant Christians,
bless Israel.
We must remember that Aaron, the Levite, was the first high priest
and his sons continued the priestly ministry.
They were a tribe separated unto God's service,
part of which was also to bless the nation of Israel
and to expect God's blessing to come upon the people.
2000 years ago this process changed.
Until the destruction of the Second temple
the Aaronic blessing was in place to bless the people of Israel.
Something happened that even Jewish historians admit.
40 years before the destruction of the Second temple
sacrifices lost their meaning.
Sacrifices and blessings the sons of Aaron performed
were no longer in effect.
It was abolished on 14th of Nissan 30 or 33 AD.
Jesus gave his life on the cross of Colgatha,
which dissolved the existing sacrificial procedures
which also included the blessing.
With his personal one-time sacrifice
Jesus added a completely new element
to the blessing of the people of Israel
and to the relationship with God of all the nations of the earth.
That is our starting point when studying these things.
The author of the letter of Hebrews knew thoroughly
the Old Testament sacrificial procedures.
He knew everything about the temple service
during the Second Temple times
and gave a clear survey of it in Hebrews
as to how it pertains to the redepmtive work of Christ.
Hebrews 10:3-6 and 10-13.
But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats
could take away sins.
Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:
“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure ...
By that will we ..." New Covenant Christians,
all the nations of the earth, "... have been sanctified,
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
And every priest stands ministering daily
and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices,
which can never take away sins. But this Man,
after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever,
sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting
till His enemies are made His footstool."
It is quite an exciting and special output from a Rabbi
who had lived with excellent knowledge
of the temple ministry and sacrifices of the Second temple.
If he was Paul,
he could have been considered a genius in his time.
As all the Rabbis of that time, he knew the whole Torah,
our Old Testament with all of its explanations.
He had to know it by heart and he knew it exceptionally well.
He rendered futile the Old Testament temple service,
which also included the blessing
that had continued until the Second temple,
and said that it will all be replaced by Chirst's once-for-all sacrifice.
That sacrifice was pleasing to God,
as Jesus was exalted and sat down at God's right hand.
The Bible also mentions something very comforting in Hebrews.
He sits at the right hand of God
and lives to make intercession for us.
It is comforting to know that our heavenly attorney
prays for us even now, for us, miserable people,
whom He gave His life for
and whose debt of sin He reconciled.
As for the problematic relationship of the people of Israel with God,
Israel's eyes are still veiled regarding the ministry of sacrifices.
They do not see nor understand
that Christ has come and reconciled their sin.
Modern Judaism still waits for its messiah to come
and establish the 1000-year reign.
The expectation and longing for the Messiah
is unbelievably strong in Israel today.
Let's return to our title topic. I tend to jump around a bit.
How does the priestly ministry, including the Aaronic blessing,
pertain to us, modern Christians?
It does pertain. The blessing of the nation of Israel
has never been extracted from the Bible.
No post-Second temple New Testament letters or teachings
command to stop blessing Israel. Thus it must continue.
Were the blessing of Israel abolished,
it would have definitely been mentioned.
What can be a better blessing
than displaying the message about Him
who has redeemed us into life everlasting?
It also became clear for Peter.
1 Peter 2:6-10 is a passage
I call "The Christian's Declaration of Identity".
It ties our priestly calling,
as according to the Bible we are all Christ's priests,
seamlessly to God's promise
given through Moses to the nation of Israel:
"You are my peculiar people, a nation of priests."
Listen to how apostle Peter understood all this.
Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, "Behold,
I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious ..."
He's talking about Christ.
"And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.”
He's not talking about a physical stone, but Christ.
"To you who believe, He is precious;
but to those who are disobedient,
“The stone which the builders (the Jews) rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone,"
and “A stone of stumbling And a rock of offense.”
They stumble, being disobedient to the word,
to which they also were appointed.
Now the priestly calling to us, believers:
"But you are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people ..."
All the same promises and arguments God gave through Moses to Israel,
and also to Aaron and his sons, to continue the priestly blessing.
Peter continues to explain why.
"That you may proclaim the praises of Him
who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
who once were not a people ..." The Jews were the people before.
"... but are now the people of God,
who had not obtained mercy..." It was given to the Jews.
"But now you have obtained mercy."
God wanted us to understand,
that now that the Aaronic priesthood has ended,
and through that also the blessing addressed to Israel,
the call to bless has been transferred
to the New Covenant kingdom of priests,
to us, born again Christians.
We continue the same assignment of blessing Israel.
We do not bless their deeds, God did not bless them either,
at least not all of their deeds.
We bless God's unfulfilled prophecies and promises
that one day will bring the nation back to God.
That's what it is all about.
That is why we have to continue and emphasize blessing Israel.
It is pleasing to God.
He has promised to reciprocate and bless those who do it.
It is not about some business deal with God.
We cannot deal with Him. We cannot think:
"OK, I will bless Israel and God has promised to bless me."
Even though in our hearts we don't think that way.
We must understand our instructions from the Bible
and obediently act on them.
Only then will God keep His promise and bless them that bless His nation,
the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
That is what it is all about.
That's why I challenge all Christians to understand this subject
as being in harmony with God's will and the Bible,
and act accordingly. May God bless you richly!
Translation: Monika Jaaguri