According to the bible, Israel’s character as the chosen people is unconditional as it says in Deuteronomy 14:2
"For you are a holy people to YHWH your God, and God has chosen you to be his treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth."
"Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from all the peoples, for all the earth is mine" (Exodus 19:5).
God promises that he will never exchange his people with any other:
"And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you." (Genesis 17:7).
God wanted the Jewish people to be a Light to the nations. The nation of Israel was to be God’s kingdom of priests who would be mentors to the world in terms of spiritual and moral guidance to the entire world.
"Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation' " (Exodus 19:3-6).
A kingdom of priests? Who were the priests and what did they do? In the ancient world they instructed people about God and interceded for people before God. Now if the entire nation of Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests, then what other people were they supposed to instruct and intercede for? Well, who was left? The rest of the nations of the earth. At Sinai, the Jewish people received more than the Law of Moses; they received a mandate, rooted in God’s desire to see His revelations go out to all the families of the earth. Here’s a fascinating characteristic of the God of the Jews. If this God was truly biased and selected the Jews out of all the nations because of a human kind of favoritism, would He not have stipulated that no other race was allowed to depart from Egypt except His own “chosen” people prior to the mass exodus that marked the emancipation of the Israelites from Pharaoh? But the reality is that Egyptians who made the choice to forsake their pagan gods and attach themselves to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob left Egypt with the Jews, Exodus 12:38. And it is a known fact that God then judged the false gods of the Egyptians after that.
THE TORAH THE LAW AND THE NATIONS
If you did not know this, please do take note that the Laws that constitute the Judicial systems of the world all stem from the Mosaic law which was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. The bible tells us that God gave the Jews the Law for many reasons; so that the Jews would not just survive but thrive (Deut 6:3); so that they might be blessed as they lived in the land (Deut 28:1-14); to set the Jews apart from all the nations surrounding them (Exodus 19:5-6); to demonstrate God’s holy character (Leviticus 19:2 and Deut 4:8); to convict the Jews of sins; and to lead them to faith in the Messiah. But there was at least one more reason why God gave the Jewish people the Law. Moses explained that God gave the Hebrews the Law as a story to the nations surrounding them. He wanted every sphere of their existence – their worship, business dealings, social relations – to shine as a light to the nations. He wanted the goyim (gentiles) to understand that the God of the Jews was real, near to them and answered when they called Him. He wanted the gentiles to turn from their idols and serve only Him, the true and living God.
DISOBEDIENCE
God is just, righteous and holy. That means He cannot turn a blind eye to sin. Throughout history, we have a track record in the old testament of how God dealt with sin and rampant wickedness. He destroyed every living thing on land with the flood of Noah but He spared only Noah and his family because “Noah was a righteous man and walked with God”. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus incensed the crowd by reminding them that the rampant wickedness of Israel during Elijah’s time was such that God sent him to a widow in Zarephath in Phoenicia, a gentile nation, during a 3 year drought. So God chose to bless a gentile widow instead of helping distressed Hebrew widows. Equally so, Elisha healed a gentile leper, Naaman of Syria yet there were numerous lepers who were descendants of Abraham who didn’t receive that privilege. Immediately after saying those words the Jews were so enraged that they took Jesus to a cliff in order to push Him over to His death. But Jesus slipped miraculously through their grasp and avoided disaster. What made the crowd so mad at Jesus? His honesty in telling them that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sometimes extends His help to the gentiles ignoring the Jewish people because of their unbelief and rebelliousness.
The Jewish people’s stubbornness, their disregard for the covenant not only demonstrated their profound ingratitude toward God for all that He had done for them; it also compromised His story to the nations that He wanted to reach. Yes the Jews claimed (rightly so) to be God’s special possession, but didn’t live in a special way that distinguished them from the rest of the world. The Jews were all talk and no action (faith without action) and instead of representing God with honor and excellence, they brought disgrace and ridicule to His holy name among the gentiles. As a result, God executed justice and allowed the Babylonians to defeat the Jews and cart them away into captivity for seventy years. Throughout history God has shown Himself to be the God who is fair and just. He rewards the upright and faithful but punishes the wicked. Look at the scripture below from the OT:
"So it will be a reproach, a reviling, a warning and an object of horror to the nations who surround you when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath and raging rebukes. I, the LORD, have spoken" (Ezekiel 5:15).
God acted in this way to show His Chosen People and the neighboring nations that He holds men and women accountable for their wicked behavior but rewards those who live according to His covenant.
Turning bad into good
Jewish people have always known that mankind is broken but because they drifted away from God’s ways, they’ve tried to rectify the problem through social philosophy, politics, science and other godless methods. All these efforts have been in vain because the problem is spiritual. The bible calls this human problem sin. As an all knowing God, He had made provision to redeem the world through a Saviour, Jesus Christ. The plan was fulfilled through God’s Son Jesus Christ who took mankind’s place at the cross, died and then rose again showing not only that He has power over death, but that He truly is God in human flesh. Therefore, the message of redemption brought by the Saviour, Jesus Christ, would be disseminated among the Jewish people first before being spread to the rest of the world.
As modern scholars suspect, the Torah, the first five books of the bible, takes its final form during the Babylonian exile. But dwarfed by the mighty temples and giant statues of Babylonian gods, the Israelite must also confront the fundamental question, why did their God Yahweh forsake them? In the ancient world if your country was destroyed by another country it meant that their gods were more powerful than your gods. And the natural thing to do was to worship the more powerful god. But the survivors continued to worship Yahweh and struggled to understand why this could have happened. The standard explanation was that the Jews must have done something wrong to incur the wrath of their God. It was out of this that they reflected that polytheism must have been the cause of their downfall. After all, polytheism was never the way of the Hebrews because they had only one God. One thing I find quite fascinating when I read about the Israelites is this. Before the destruction of the temple of Solomon wherever archaeologists dug in any part of the Judean country they found hundreds if not thousands of figurines even in Jerusalem itself. But after the destruction, there are none. The Israelites abandon the folly of polytheism, Monotheism triumphs and the archaeological evidence proves it. Monotheism is firmly ensconced after the captivity. So the experience of the exile and writing the bible, the concept of God as it is known today is born. The Israelite Deity Yahweh forms the basis of the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Through its teachings, the Hebrew bible establishes a code of morality and justice, aspirations that resonate through the ages, becoming the sacred text for over 3 billion people.
How archaeology confirms the bible to be God’s Word
The Pontius Pilate Inscription
Critics and bible scholars have disputed and rejected the fact that there ever was a person called Pontius Pilate whom the gospel writers wrote about and claimed to be Governor of Judea during the period of Jesus’ crucifixion. But in 1961, Archaeologists excavating a site in Caesarea, situated on the Mediterranean coast of present day Israel, uncovered a stone that carried a Latin inscription on it that read; Pontius Pilatus, prefect of Judea. Matthew 27: 2 said of Pilate;
And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the Governor.
This substantiated the gospel claim that Pontius Pilate existed and was the Governor of Judea during Jesus’ trial and crucifixion.
The David Inscription
Like the Pontius Pilate story, David the boy who killed Goliath, who later is said to have become King of Israel, was believed by many bible experts to be no more than a figment of Israelite imagination because up until that time, there was no archaeological evidence to back the bible statements up. Enter Avraham Biran, an Israeli Archaeologist who discovered a stone and on that stone was an inscription of an Israelite King from the house of David. Coincidentally the bible uses exactly that designation in 1 Kings 12:19. This particular find happened in 1993 and corroborates the biblical text.
The Pool of Siloam
In the new testament gospel of John, Jesus said the following to a blind man, ‘…go and wash in the pool of Siloam’ which is translated sent (John 9:7). The man obeyed and after washing, his eyes were opened and he could see. This story was corroborated when, in 2005, a stepped entrance to the pool of Siloam was uncovered in the area known as the city of David. The excavation was led by Eli Shukron and Ronny Reich of the Israel Antiques Authority. This account is further proof of the bible’s historical accuracy.
There are numerous ancient discoveries that verify the bible’s accuracy and the ones I have mentioned are a minute sample.
Nobel Prize Laureates
Out of over 900 Nobel Prize winners 206 of them have been won by Jews. Jews constitute 0,2% of the world’s population. With that percentage of the global figure, they should have won only 2.
· Chemistry (36 prize winners, 21% of world total, 31% of US total)
· Economics (30 prize winners, 38% of world total, 50% of US total)
· Literature (15 prize winners, 13% of world total, 33% of US total)
· Peace (9 prize winners, 9% of world total, 10% of US total)4
· Physics (52 prize winners, 26% of world total, 37% of US total)
· Physiology or Medicine (55 prize winners, 26% of world total, 39% of US total)
I’ve asked myself the question and am asking you too, do you think all the aforementioned facts that I’ve posed and now the Nobel prizes won by Jewish people which translate into immeasurable contributions to human development and advancement in the relevant fields are just coincidences? I’ll let you ponder on that so you can reach your own conclusion.
A LOOK AT HOW JEWS HAVE IMPACTED HUMANITY
I’m sure many of you reading this blog didn’t know half the people behind the above success stories were Jewish. And again it begs the question, why do Jewish people seem to have a disproportionate level of success in almost everything they do compared to other races. They are a tiny minority, out of 7 billion people on earth they constitute only 0.2% of that number yet the advancement that they have brought to humanity through medical science, engineering, IT, the legal field, Music, Literature, Science, economics and many other fields of human endeavour is astounding. When I look at the different pieces of evidence, the various factors that I’ve built on to make a case for why I believe the Jews are God’s chosen people, I think you’ll agree that the facts correspond to reality and that there is coherence when all the pieces are put together and answers are given. Above all, my arguments are given more credence when I consider what God said to Abraham:
Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”…. emphasis mine.
What we have seen happening for and through the Jewish people for over 4000 years to this very day is a fulfilment of the words of benediction spoken to Abraham by the Lord. Examine the words of God spoken through the prophet Ezekiel;
"Then the nations will know that I am the LORD," declares the Lord GOD, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land" (Ezekiel 36:23-24).
And now, after nearly two thousand years, many Jews are back in the Land of Israel just as God had prophetically spoken. Even to this day there continues to be an exodus of Jews from all four corners of the globe who are trekking back to the land of promise. The Jews must be restored to a correct relationship with the one who sent Yeshua (Jesus). They rejected Yeshua, that means they rejected Yahweh (The God of Abraham). Yahweh chose the Jews and will always love them. No one will ever replace them as the chosen race.
Watch out for Part III where Getmore wraps up this intriguing and revelation-filled blog about the Jews.
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