Why Israel?

 That Israel should be chosen by God to stand before Him in a special relationship is as offensive to our corporate religious sense as ever it has been.  Consider this, the Lord God of Israel says, “See I have inscribed you (Jerusalem and, by extension, Israel) on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before me” (Isaiah 49:16).  Of what other nation and peoples can this be said?

Why need God have chosen any nation or peoples to stand before Him in a special relationship?  All too briefly, as the world was lost through the sin (rebellion) of one man, it must be won back by the obedience of one man (I Corinthians 15:22).  As the man who lost it all was first without sin, so must also the man who restores all things before God be without sin. 

In order to do this, meeting all legal requirements so that His own righteousness be vindicated, God entered into successive covenants (contractual agreements) with a people who came to be known as Israelites.  God could have done it with any peoples, but for His own sovereign reasons He chose the Israelites whom we now know generally as Jews.

Through this people a man would come Who, because of His sinless life before God, would be able to satisfy every righteous requirement of God, in order that all humankind could be restored to a position of openness and non-condemnation before God.  This man was a Jew and His Name is Jesus.  All this may sound like so much religious gobbledygook (“jargon”), but still it’s a fact.  The supreme fact is that Jehovah God, the only One, True God, is righteous and holy and He had to make provision for setting man free from His sin.  That was through the shedding of His Son’s precious blood.  Hebrews 9:22 puts it this way:  “And according to the law, almost all things are purged (cleansed) with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission (forgiveness).” Otherwise sin establishes an impenetrable barrier between God and man.

Hebrews further speaks of the order of things:  “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.  To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation” (9:27,28).

But there’s more.  Because there are covenant obligations to be met before the earth can yet enter into the fabled time of the Millennium, Israel is mightily opposed because these covenant obligations swirl about her, but, in reality, are for the benefit of all mankind.  This is why we are to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” and this admonition is followed with a promise, “. . . they shall prosper who love you” (Psalm 122:6).