So, how does Israel bear witness to God today? From our perspective, please consider the following:
- Israel is an object lesson that confirms God’s ongoing covenant of grace with Israel and the World. The God revealed in the Hebrew scriptures keeps His word and promises.
- Israel’s death, resurrection & return to their ancient homeland is an object lesson. It points us back to the death, resurrection & ascension of Yeshua that preceded it. Like Yeshua before them, Israel has been a nation scorned and rejected. The Jews in the diaspora are like the scapegoat that was led alive into the wilderness of nations. Theologically speaking, all of this had to follow their rejection and murder of Yeshua, their brother, and Messiah, just as their resurrection and return followed the resurrection of Yeshua and his return to his home in heaven.
- Israel is an object lesson demonstrating how God has historically revealed himself. We know God by what he has done in history and through revelation and his incarnation within the community of Israel.
- Israel is a testimony to salvation as a free gift of God’s grace. Israel testifies to the fact that, despite our antagonism and rebellion against God, and although God is a God of judgment, His mercy triumphs over judgment. This is seen in the symbolism of the Ark of the Covenant, where the meeting place was the mercy seat above the Ark, concealing the tablets of the Law, which called for judgment.
- Israel is a negative object lesson revealing that despite God’s love, patience, and mercy, Israel, like all of humanity, continues in their sin and rebellion against Him. Although Israel continues to be a sinful nation, she remains the servant of God… serving His purpose so that the world learns who He is and what He is like.
- Israel reveals God as a person we have encountered in history.
- Israel reflects that there is a sovereign process of judgment going on throughout history, and every nation has to give account to God.
- Israel’s resurrection and return to her covenant land testifies to the coming day of the Lord and a new creation when the Messiah comes back to the earth in judgment, mercy, and renewal.
- For more than 3,000 years of intense and intimate dealings, God carefully, patiently, and deliberately imprinted himself upon Israel’s very essence. Not only within Israel’s consciousness, but God penetrated their subconscious and into their very DNA. They’ve been taught Torah and instructed their children for millennia in ways of living that will lead to life. Israel is saturated in Torah… the self-revelation of almighty God. Even in their current state of unbelief, Israel is a light to the nations, a glaring example of what is released from a people saturated and bathed in the ways of God.
- Israel, by her presence in the Promised Land, testifies that God is doing something tremendous and dramatic in history.