Where are you on the Israel question?

Editor’s note: The modern State of Israel was born on May 14, 1948. It was the climax of 1,800 years of forced exile and waiting. The Prophets speak over and over about how God will regather the scattered tribes of Israel into the land promised to Abraham. We are in the midst of God’s fulfilment of these promises. Since at least the 1880s, Jewish people have been fleeing persecution and finding refugee in ancient Judea and Samaria. Roughly half of the world’s Jewish reside in Israel, and most of the other half reside in the United States. This sermon – given May 5, 2024, at Emmaus Anglican Church in Castle Rock, CO – is a meditation on how God is regathering the Jewish people and how Christians should engage with this reality. The base Bible texts are Isaiah 45:11–25 and Acts 11:19–30.

Recently I started a book that’s been sitting on my nightstand for months: The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism by Jason Staples. It’s a deep dive into what the word Israel means versus Jew and Hebrew.

In chapter one, he writes about a German scholar Karl G. Kuhn, who wrote an influential paper on Israel vs. Hebrews vs. Jews. Many biblical scholars have quoted this paper and its arguments have become accepted assumptions. Staples is not OK with that. He thinks we need to look again. And one of the reasons why is Karl Kuhn’s environment and personal convictions. Kuhn wrote in 1930s Germany. He would lecture on Judaism in a Nazi uniform.^[i] He also lectured and wrote extensively on “the Jewish question.”

What’s “the Jewish question”? In the 19th century, “the status of European Jews became the subject of heated debate in an era when they were gradually being granted civil rights and equality.”^[ii] Many expected Jews to assimilate by adapting or abandoning their customs and religion. “Racial antisemites, however, denied that conversion or acculturation were real ‘solutions’ to the ‘Jewish Question.’ Rather, they believed that Jews were a separate ‘race,’ whose behavior, traits, and character were negative and unchangeable.”^[iii] This line of thinking ultimately led to Hilter’s “Final Solution” – final solution to the Jewish question – and the monstrous murder of 6 million Jews, including Jewish followers of Jesus.

Today, in a post-October 7 world – after Hamas invaded Israeli civilian homes and murdered 1200 and then Israel invaded Gaza and has killed tens of thousands of Gazans – some in the nations are debating “the Israel Question.” Should Israel exist as a nation-state? What about the Palestinians? What about Jews in the diaspora?

I will not answer those questions for you here. What I hope to do is give you biblical and historical data points as you mull these questions. And I hope you will see with me God’s call for us to imitate him in his compassion for all nations, for all peoples – Jew, Arab, North American, South American, European, Asian – ALL.

Let’s begin with Isaiah 45. This chapter starts with God talking to Cyrus, King of Persia. “For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I name you, though you do not know me” (v. 4).

The northern kingdom of Judah was taken into Babylonian captivity after Jerusalem was destroyed. After 70 years of exile, God used Persia to conquer Babylon and free the exiles. God went so far as to call the pagan Cyrus “my shepherd” and “his messiah/anointed” (Isa 44:28-45:1).

These passages on Cyrus are found in the midst of the Servant Songs of Isaiah, where “Isaiah has diagnosed a double need in the Lord’s people, national bondage (42:18–43:21) and spiritual sinfulness (43:22–44:23).”^[iv] Isaiah then records how God will meet those needs.

For the Babylonian captivity, God’s answer was Cyrus. He would end their physical bondage and foster their return to their ancient homeland.

The cure for Israel’s spiritual sinfulness is spoken of in the last Servant Song, Isaiah 53:

⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions;

   he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

   and with his wounds we are healed.

⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;

   we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

   the iniquity of us all.

Who is this us? In the original context, it is the people of Israel.

In Acts 3, Peter preached in the temple and identified Jesus as God’s Servant. Jesus is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, the one who has come to cleanse and justify sinful Israel and the nations (Isa 52:13-15). The LORD used Peter’s first two sermons to bring 8,000 Jewish people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. Amazing!

But not all in Israel believe. Not all are pleased. Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 is not well received. It costs him his life. And with his death came a scattering, an exile of the Jewish followers of Jesus.

Our Acts 11 reading tells us that the followers of Jesus who fled Jerusalem stayed along the Mediterranean in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. For reference, think Lebanon, southern Turkey, and the island of Cyprus.

As these refugees moved, they spoke of Jesus “to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:19-29).

Let’s define some terms. We have some believers sharing the gospel with “Jews” and some sharing with “Hellenists.” Some translations will say “Greeks.”

The word Jew has come to mean anyone who is ethnically tied to one of the 12 tribes of Jacob and/or anyone who practices the religion of Judaism. In Greek it’s Ioudaios.

But in the time the New Testament was written, Ioudaios referred to someone from Judea and/or someone who worshiped the God of Israel in the Judean style. Judeans followed the Torah and worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem.^[v]

So, who were the Hellenists? They were not Gentiles as some have taught. When Luke wants to refer to Gentiles, he uses another word. Three times in Acts, Luke uses Hellenist to refer to Greek-speaking Jews (cf. Acts 6, 9). The Hellenists were secularized Israelites who had assimilated into the greater Greco-Roman culture.

That Hellenists were believing in Jesus may have come as a shock to the Judeans. Why? The Macabbean Revolt commemorated at Hanukkah wasn’t just about throwing off Greek oppression but about cleansing Israel from those who were mixing and compromising with Greek culture. It was also a civil war.^[vi] Jew fought against Jew.

We see some of these dynamics in the American church still, 160 years since our Civil War.

• Well, those Southern Christians haven’t dealt with their racism.
• Well, those Northern Christians are so liberal I wonder if they’re really Christians.

The identity politics of North and South – and of middle America vs. the coasts – color our Christian outlook. So it was among the Israelites of the first century. Their culture wars made them question who could come to Jesus.

Notice who’s preaching to the Hellenists: those from Cyprus and Cyrene. Cyprus is an island off the coast of Lebanon that has spoken Greek since it was conquered by Alexander the Great. Cyrene was a Greek colony in what is now Libya. So Greek-speaking Jews from outside Judea are preaching to the Greek-speaking Jews of Antioch.

“And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.” Hallelujah!

Word gets to Jerusalem – to Judea – that Greek-speaking Jews are coming to faith in Jesus! Shocking. So they send Barnabas to investigate.

²³ When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.

Barnabas sees that the Holy Spirit is at work and validates the evangelistic work. He also knows that these Hellenists are probably biblically illiterate and need to get caught up. So he goes up a little ways from Antioch to find Saul in Tarsus. Together Barnabas the Levite and Saul the Pharisee teach the Hellenists about Jesus and the Scriptures.

Wow!

Earlier in Acts 7 we saw Pharisees and Sadducees execute Stephen the Greek-speaker as a blasphemer. Now in Acts 11 we see Levites, Pharisees, and Hellenists in communion under the banner of Jesus Messiah.

And so we see the first fruits fulfillment of Israel regathered spiritually. As the LORD said in Isaiah 45:

¹⁷ Israel is saved by the Lord

   with everlasting salvation;

   you shall not be put to shame

or confounded to all eternity.

¹⁸ For thus says the Lord…
“I am the Lord, and there is no other.
  ¹⁹ I did not speak in secret,
    in a land of darkness;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,
    ‘Seek me in vain.’
      I the Lord speak the truth;
    I declare what is right.

God did not create the people of Israel in vain. He did not create them just to give the nations the Messiah and then toss them as some used-up vessel. The message of salvation continues to be as much for them as it is for the nations.

In the 19th century, Israel was again scattered and exiled – physically and spiritually. As Europe was contemplating “the Jewish Question,” Jews began to return to their ancient homeland. As antisemitism flared in Russia, France, and Germany, Jews relocated – some here to the United States and some to ancient Judea and Samaria. It was not a Cyrus who beckoned the Israelites home this time. Instead, it was the antisemitic hatred of the nations driving them away.

Those same nations validated Israel’s return to their homeland through the League of Nations in 1920^[vii] and – after the Holocaust – through the United Nations in 1947.^[viii] The Arab nations expelled most of their Jewish populations in the 1950s, and many Middle Eastern and North African Jews settled in the newly founded State of Israel. God used all the nations of the world in the 20th century to end Israel’s physical exile.

But what of spiritual renewal? Recently I attended a seminar at Denver Seminary on The Jews and the Church Pre-, During-, Post-Holocaust. We heard about the Jewish Christians who suffered in the Holocaust and about another German Christian theologian who initially saw the Nazis as a gift from God.

Then we heard from Dr. Dan Sered from Jews for Jesus. He reminded us that after the Holocaust so much of the church drew back from sharing Jesus with Jewish people out of shame for Christian antisemitism or out of too much caution.

But something happened in the 1960s and 70s. Young people – among them Jews – discarded religion and looked for meaning in political activism, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But those things proved empty in time. In their confusion, these young seekers stumbled on to Jesus, first on the beaches of California and later in nations around the world.

Many of the elder statements in the Messianic movement today – Michael L. Brown, Dan Juster, Asher Intrater, David H. Stern – came to faith in the Messiah through the Jesus movement. They are now the Sauls and Barnabases teaching Jews and Gentiles about Jesus and the Scriptures.

Let’s finish back in Isaiah 45.

²⁰ “Assemble yourselves and come;
    draw near together,
    you survivors of the nations!
  ²² “Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.
  ²³ By myself I have sworn;
    from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

The LORD, in Isaiah 45, is calling all the nations to himself. ALL the nations, including Israel, including Palestine, and the United States, and China and Europe. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”

In Isaiah, it’s clear that the God of Israel is speaking. Paul focuses it a bit more when he quotes Isaiah 45 in Philippians 2 as he lauds the Messiah,

⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Suffering Servant who justifies Israel and the nations is God himself. Jesus Messiah is ADONAI, and he beckons Israel and all the nations to himself.

Israel’s physical exile ended in 1948, but it continues in spiritual exile. Most Jews today are like the Hellenists – aware of their Jewish parentage, maybe they gather with family on the big feast days, but they are secular in most everything else.

²⁴ “Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
    are righteousness and strength…
  ²⁵ In the Lord all the offspring of Israel
    shall be justified and shall glory.”

Christian, where do we stand on the Israel question? Where do we stand on the Palestinian question?

We must stand with the crucified Messiah who says with his dying breath, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

We must stand with Yeshua the Messiah, the Son of Man who sits at the right hand of the Father ever interceding for humanity.

To the grief-stricken Jews and Arabs among us, we must offer a listening ear, a warm hug, a cold cup of water, a plate of hot food. We must be Jesus to them before we can preach Jesus to them.

Friends, we must be like the believers from Cyprus and Cyrene ready and eager to share the love of Jesus with those around us. Amen.

Footnotes

^[i] Jason A. Staples, The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 32ff.

^[ii] “The ‘Jewish Question,’” Holocaust Encyclopedia, The United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, Nov 26, 2019. Accessed May 3, 2024.

^[iii] “The ‘Jewish Question,’” Holocaust Encyclopedia.

^[iv] J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 352–353.

^[v] For a great discussion on Ioudaios, see The Jewish Gospel of John: Discovering Jesus, King of All Israel by Eli Lizorkin Eyzenberg.

^[vi] Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “Maccabean Revolt.” My Jewish Learning.

^[vii] Efraim Karsh, “How San Remo Birthed the Jewish National Home,” Middle East Quarterly (2020).

^[viii] “United Nations Resolution 181 | Map & Summary | Britannica"