The cost of believing

Most Jewish people have one thing in common above all others. They may be religious Jews; they may be secular Jews. They may have a deep faith in God; they may be atheists. They may have studied comparative religion; they may never have given it a thought. But the thing that most of them have in common is that they don’t believe in Jesus. Not because they don’t think that Jesus is the Messiah, or because they do think He’s the Messiah. But because they are Jews, and Jews don’t believe in Jesus.

Jhan Moscowitz - he was born to Holocaust survivors, and he believed in Jesus as Messiah - explained it like this:

“Believing in Jesus means, at least initially, a betrayal of loyalty. We’ve been trained and socialised as Jewish people to be loyal to our group. Our group is us, and everybody else is them. Us, them. Them believe in Jesus. We don’t. Therefore if you become a believer in Jesus you become a them. In becoming a them, there is a sense of disloyalty to heritage, people, family.

“And so the real cost is giving up that association, being considered a traitor, being pushed out from the community. And that’s an expensive cost, especially considering that loyalty really is a virtue. The only problem is that loyalty ceases to be a virtue when it’s employed in the service of a lie.

“That’s what I generally tell people. I say, Listen, I think it’s virtuous of you to be loyal to the Jewish people, and I don’t want to ask you to be disloyal to the Jewish people, but I want you to put your loyalty above the Jewish people, to God Himself.

“You are leaving them to wrestle with ‘If this is true, what does God want you to do?’ I try to quickly add that although the Jewish people may think you are a traitor to the Jewish cause, God doesn’t think so at all. In fact, it’s the most Jewish thing in the world to believe in the Jewish Messiah.

“If God is real and Jesus is the Messiah, then whatever the cost, it’s worth knowing and worth doing.”
           

One new man

By His death, Jesus instituted the new covenant. The price was His own precious blood. 

As the Bible says about the consequent relationship between Jew and Gentile:

For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of division between us,

Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace,

And that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.

  Ephesians 2:14 – 16.

God made the new covenant with Israel. The Jews had been subject to Moses’ law, given to them at Mount Sinai. The commandments of Moses’ law made a difference between them and the Gentiles. The Jews having broken that Mosaic covenant, God “broke down the middle wall of division” – the laws of Moses – so that Jesus could present Jew and Gentile as “one new man” to God.

With every one who was forgiven because of Jesus’ sacrifice no longer dead in trespasses, but alive in Him.

There had been two classes of people: Jews and Gentiles. Now there were three: Jews, Gentiles and the church, the church being made up of Jews and Gentiles who had believed on Jesus. The Jews were still Jews and the Gentiles were still Gentiles, but both equal before God.

But wait a minute. Doesn’t it say “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in  Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)? Indeed it does. But when your sister found the Messiah, did she stop being feminine? When your brother had his sins forgiven, did he stop being a man? When you Gentiles became believers, did you stop being Gentiles? Neither does the Jew stop being a Jew. The Bible is explaining that each one has exactly the same experience in Christ.

Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!

          

The last great sacrifice

The Jews believed that there were some miracles that only the Messiah, when he came, would be able to perform. Jesus deliberately did those miracles.

The rabbis, for instance, taught that a Jew with leprosy would be able to be healed only by the Messiah. One day a leper came to Jesus pleading to be healed. Jesus touched him; his leprosy disappeared. “Go your way,” He said, “show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (Mark 1:44).

 

 Again, it was not unknown for demon spirits to be cast out, but it was believed that only the Messiah would be able to cast out a dumb spirit. A man was brought to Jesus who was blind and mute. Jesus delivered him, so that he both spake and saw (Matthew 12;22).

It was said that only the Messiah would be able to heal a man blind from birth. When Jesus saw such a man, He didn’t heal him immediately, but anointed his eyes with clay and sent him to wash at the pool of Siloam, where there would be a good number of people (John 9:1 – 7).

The Pharisees had to investigate these miracles. They had two options: to declare that Jesus was the Messiah, or to come up with some other explanation for the healings. Jesus did not agree with some of the Pharisees’ beliefs: He was not their idea of what the Messiah should be. They chose the latter course. “This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons,” they said (Matthew12:24). Jesus explained that this was the unforgivable sin, but to no avail. 
 

“We want to see a sign from you,” the scribes and Pharisees said. They had already had all the signs they needed. The only sign that evil and adulterous generation would be given, said Jesus, was the sign of the prophet Jonah, who was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. So would the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:39, 40). Jesus’ resurrection was the greatest sign of all.

Some would say that Jesus demonstrated that last sign, the sign of resurrection, when Lazarus died. Jesus deliberately waited until Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days before He called him out. It was then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a council and said, “What shall we do? For this man works many signs. If we let him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said “You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” From that day they plotted to put Jesus to death (John 11:45 – 53).

It was no coincidence Jesus died at Passover. When Passover was instituted in Egypt, the Israelites were told to take a male lamb for each household and set it aside on the 10th day of the month Nisan, apparently to check that the lamb was without blemish. It was to be slaughtered on the 14th of Nisan and its blood daubed on the doorposts of the house. That night the firstborn in every house would die – except for the firstborn in the houses covered by the blood of the lamb.

The year that Jesus died, the 10th of Nisan fell on what Christians have come to know as Palm Sunday. Jesus set Himself aside as the Lamb of God on that day. He was tested with some tough questions on the several days that followed. By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority? Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, or not? A woman had seven husbands. In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? Which is the first commandment of all?

The religious leaders did not want Jesus to die at Passover. “Not during the feast,” they said, “lest there be an uproar among the people” (Matthew 26:5). But the prophetic significance of Scripture had to be fulfilled. Jesus had exposed Judas as the betrayer at the Last Supper, and told him “What you do, do quickly.” That night, Jesus was arrested. The following day He was crucified.

Jesus, “our Passover,” the Bible says, “was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

           

Too late. . . or too soon?

It was no coincidence that Jesus died at Passover. The feasts that God instructed the Jews to keep each year ­– Passover was one of them – had a prophetic significance. Passover was a remembrance of how the blood of a lamb had protected them from judgment and enabled them to be delivered from slavery. It spoke prophetically of a far greater sacrifice and a far greater deliverance that was yet to come.

The story began in Egypt. God had sent nine plagues on the Egyptians – blood, frogs, lice, flies, a pestilence on livestock, boils, hail, locusts and thick darkness – but Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go. God told the Israelites to take a male lamb for each household and set it aside on the 10th day of the month Nisan, apparently to check that it was without blemish.

The lamb was to be killed at twilight on the 14th of Nisan and some of its blood placed on the doorposts and lintel of the house. It was to be roasted and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. That night God would pass through the land of Egypt, and the firstborn in every house would die – except for the houses daubed with blood. “When I see the blood,” God said, “I will pass over you.”

The year that Jesus died, the 10th of Nisan fell on what Christians have come to know as Palm Sunday. As Jesus and His disciples walked towards Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage. Jesus sent two of His disciples into the village to bring the colt of a donkey that had never been ridden, that He might fulfil the prophecy: 

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.
   Zechariah 9:9.

Word quickly spread that the Messiah was coming. A great multitude gathered and began to shout “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” These were messianic greetings. You might have thought Jesus would rejoice to hear the crowd greeting Him as Messiah. He did not. When He saw Jerusalem, He wept.

“If you had known,”  He said, “even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. . . because you did not know the time of your visitation.” The crowd shouting a welcome to their Messiah was too late. Jesus knew a decision about the Messiah had already been taken by the religious leaders. He understood judgment was on its way: He foresaw a ravaged Jerusalem, the Temple destroyed and the Jews scattered.

Or perhaps the crowd’s messianic welcome was too early, depending on how you look at it. God has not finally finished with the Jews. The time is coming when the Jews will turn to their Messiah and Israel will become a believing nation. “And so all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26). Nothing is more certain. But that time was not yet.

          

The finger of blame

In the first and second centuries, Christians decided – without biblical backing, it must be said – that God had finished with the Jews. For centuries, Jews were despised, persecuted, herded into ghettos and expelled.

Thousands were massacred during the Crusades. Thousands were persecuted during the Inquisitions. When the Black Death ravaged Europe, the Jews were blamed, tortured and burned to death on bonfires.

 Six million were destroyed during the Holocaust. The United Nations has passed more resolutions against Israel than all other nations put together. Antisemitism is again on the increase.

We owe a great deal to the Jews. The Jews wrote the Bible. They wrote all the Old Testament, and all but two books of the New Testament. (They were written by Luke, who is said to have been a Gentile – but that’s not certain.) The patriarchs were all Jews. The prophets were all Jews. Jesus was a Jew. The New Testament apostles who not only risked their lives but gave their lives to bring the gospel to the Gentiles were all Jews. All the knowledge of God that I have has come to me directly or indirectly through Jews.

Gentiles blamed them for killing Christ. Christ-killers, they called them. True, the leaders of Israel did plot against Him. But He was sentenced to death by Pilate, who knew perfectly well He was innocent. Pilate was a Gentile. He was executed by Roman soldiers. They were Gentiles. And according to the Bible, it was my sin and your sin that sent Him to the cross.

So who can point the finger?
                 

Breaking down the middle wall

In a previous post, we talked about the law of Moses, given to the Jews to keep them until the promised Seed came. They were not justified by the law, for justification is only by faith. Until that faith was revealed, the law was their tutor, to bring them to the Messiah. After faith came, they would no longer be under a tutor.  

The Gentiles were without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. God loved them no less than He loved the Jew.

All the covenants that God made with Israel were sealed with blood. Animals were sacrificed for God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:8 – 13). Moses sprinkled the people with blood to confirm God’s covenant at Sinai (Exodus 24:6 – 8). In the fullness of time, God’s one and only Son expired on a bloody tree. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). 

Some say it is impossible for someone born as a man to make himself God. Of course it is. That isn’t the question. The question is Can God, being God, appear in human form?

When Messiah died (“I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it frombut I lay it down of myself”) Moses’ law ended. The New Testament explains it like this. In the Temple in Jerusalem was the Court of the Gentiles, where were the moneychangers and the sellers of animals. Then there was a barrier, known as the middle wall of partition. Only Jews were allowed to pass beyond that point.

Moses’ law was what separated Jew and Gentile. When Messiah died, Moses’ law became obsolete. “The middle wall of partition” was broken down. The distinction between Jew and Gentile was removed. Gentiles became able to partake in Jewish spiritual blessings; Jew and Gentile were able to become one new man in Christ.

The Jew is still a Jew; the Gentile is still a Gentile. The promises of material blessings – such as the land – still belong to the Jews. But the promises of God’s spiritual blessings belong to Jew and Gentile. Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow partakers of the promise, through faith in the Jewish Messiah. 

I have a question to ask here. Why do Jews know so little about the new covenant promised to them in the book of Jeremiah in their Hebrew Scriptures?

             

Forgiven and remembered no more

As the years went by and God continued to reveal His purposes, “precept upon precept and line upon line,” as Isaiah puts it, He made further covenants with the Jewish nation. Perhaps the most important were His covenant with Moses at Sinai, described in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and the new covenant, promised, for instance, in the book of Jeremiah.

The covenant with Moses, unlike the Abrahamic covenant, was a conditional covenant.  God said “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant” (Exodus 19:5). The Jewish people replied “All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). Sadly, the Jewish people found it too difficult to keep. They broke the covenant.

The covenant given to Moses at Sinai contained 613 laws. There were 248 positive commandments -  “thou shalt” – and 365 negative commandments – “thou shalt not.” It was made with the Jewish nation. Gentiles were never subject to Moses’ law. (A Jew is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; a Gentile is someone who is not a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.)

Jsrael had become a nation, but not a nation like the other nations: Israel was a theocracy. This was a national covenant; a covenant to live by. It had a number of purposes. It was to demonstrate the holiness of God, and the standard of righteousness that God required of man. With the covenant’s food laws and its commandments concerning the Sabbath, it was to keep the Jews a distinct people. And it was to demonstrate the reality of sin and bring the Jew to saving faith in the Messiah.

It was also for a limited time period. When Messiah came, He would institute a new covenant, a better covenant.

So when the Jews broke the covenant, did God forsake them? He did not. He promised them something better. Here is the new covenant God promised in Jeremiah, written 600 years before the promised Messiah was born:

“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah –

“Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they brake, though I was a husband to them,” says the Lord.

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

“No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” says the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Jeremiah 31:31 – 34.

The new covenant was not made with the church, but with the house of Israel and the house of Judah – in other words, with the complete nation of Israel. It was not going to be the same as the covenant He had made with the Jews at Sinai when He brought them out of Egypt, which they had broken. That had given them an external law.

Now the law was going to be internalised. It was going to be in their minds and written on their hearts. It would no longer be necessary for one person to teach another to know the Lord. It looked forward to the day when all the Jews would know Him.

Under the Mosaic covenant, their sins had been covered by the sacrifice of bulls and goats. But only covered, because the sacrifices had needed to be repeated. Under the new covenant, there was going to be one last, great and perfect sacrifice. Their iniquity would be washed away. Their sin would be forgiven and remembered no more.

           

No conditions

We were talking about the provisions of the covenant God made with Abraham. God said that to the nation that came from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob He would give the land of Canaan forever – for “an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). Israel were later scattered from the land because of their disobedience, but the land remained theirs. God always promised they would return.

According to the covenant, all the families of the earth would be blessed through this nation. Consider the number of medical and scientific discoveries, the number of Nobel prizewinners, the humanitarian efforts at national disasters. The Bible – both Old and New Testaments – was written by Jews. (The Old Testament was written by Jews. Of the writers of the 27 books of the New Testament, only Luke may have been a Gentile – and that’s not certain.) Above all, consider the blessing to the world brought by the Jewish Messiah. “Salvation,” He said, “is of the Jews” (John 4:22).

The covenant contains a wonderful promise, which apparently applies to all of the Jews: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you” (Genesis 12:3). The blessing appears to be a blessing in kind, and the curse a curse in kind.

Because Rahab saved the lives of the Jewish spies, God saved Rahab and her family. In Egypt, after Pharaoh ordered all the male Hebrew babies to be drowned in the Nile, the entire Egyptian army was drowned in the Red Sea. In the time of Esther, when the antisemite Haman built a gallows to hang Mordecai the Jew, he wound up being hanged on it himself. In more recent times, Hitler’s henchmen  formed ghettos in the major cities and built high walls around them so the Jews could not escape. After the war, the Berlin Wall divided the city which Hitler had chosen to be his pride and joy. And before the Nazis made Zyklon B gas readily available and built the gas chambers, they shot countless thousands of Jews and burned their bodies. How did Hitler die? He was shot and his body burned.

Abraham was promised that he would father a multitude of other nations, apart from Israel. He was also father of the Arab nations.

Finally, circumcision of male children on the eighth day was to be the sign of the covenant.

When you read how the covenant was ratified in Genesis chapter 15, you will notice something unusual. Abraham sacrificed a number of animals and placed them in two rows. When it was time for the parties to pass between the rows, only God passed between them. God had placed Abraham in a deep sleep. This was an unconditional covenant. God was unilaterally covenanting to do these things for the Jewish nation without corresponding obligations on Israel's part. 

The things particularly to remember about God’s covenant with Abraham are first, that it is unconditional, and second, that it is eternal and unchanging.
           

The birth of a nation

Some nations don’t know exactly how or when they originated. The Jews have no such problem. God wanted a chosen nation, a peculiar nation, a holy nation through whom He could demonstrate Himself to the world. Out of all the people on the face of the earth, He spoke to one man – Abraham, who lived in Ur of the Chaldees.

Abraham originally called himself Abram, which means “Exalted father.” God later changed his name to Abraham, which means “Father of a multitude.” “Get out of your country,” God told him, “from your kindred and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.” Abraham obeyed.

God made a covenant with Abraham. Cutting a covenant is something that sounds strange to Western ears, but it would have been well understood at the time - some four thousand years ago - and in the place where Abraham was. It was a binding agreement between two parties. 

God told Abraham he would bless him, and make his name great. The nation that came from Abraham would be a great nation. “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered,” He said (Genesis 13:16).

God promised that Abraham would have a son by his wife Sarah. They were both old, and in addition, Sarah was barren – but true to God’s promise, she gave birth to a son, Isaac. Abraham eventually had a number of sons, but the covenant would be confirmed, God said, through Isaac.

Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob, but the covenant would be confirmed, God said, through Jacob. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, and Israel’s 12 sons became fathers of the 12 tribes. A Jew then is someone who is descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The covenant is described in the Bible in considerable detail in a number of chapters beginning in Genesis chapter 12. Chapter 17 mentions three times that this is an everlasting covenant. If everlasting means what it says, then God’s covenant with Abraham still stands.

God confirmed the eternal nature of the covenant, for instance, in Psalm 105:

O seed of Abraham his servant,

You children of Jacob, his chosen ones!

He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth.

He has remembered his covenant for ever,

The word which he commanded, for a thousand generations,

The covenant which he made with Abraham,

And his oath to Isaac,

And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute,

To Israel for an everlasting covenant,

Saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan

As the allotment of your inheritance,”

When they were but few in number,

Indeed very few, and strangers in it.

When they went from one nation to another,

From one kingdom to another people,

He permitted no one to do them wrong;

Yes, he reproved kings for their sakes,

Saying, “Do not touch my anointed ones,

And do my prophets no harm.”

Psalm 105:6 – 15.