Lost Sheep of Israel -

On the Mission of Jesus to the Lost Sheep of Israel: A Pastoral Dialogue

December 17, 2024 No Comments

I chatted with a Pastor friend on the blog entry about Jesus being sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. Among other things, my Pastor friend believes such a claim implies a few discordant things:

Gentiles are “an afterthought.”
Jesus is the Savior of only the Jews, and many Jews did not even accept him.
Gentiles today should be practicing Judaism, not Christianity.

I am sympathetic to him and others who would feel that way. I had similar thoughts and discomfort when I was first confronted with these issues some years ago. However, I do not think the picture is as bleak or fuzzy as my friend may appear to imply. Let’s unpack the points one after the other.

First, I must reiterate that I did not claim that Jesus was only sent to the Jews in the first century. The Matthean Jesus did. In his own words, Jesus understood his mission as primarily to first-century Jews. So, even if a reader dislikes my explanation, the text remains and confronts us:

Matthew 15:24 ESV
[Jesus] answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Second, as repeatedly stressed in the more extended blog entry, the fact that Jesus was only sent to the Jews does not have to mean he was only for the Jews. That we even think that way betrays our ignorance of biblical theology. For the umpteenth time, God called Abraham to solve the Adam problem. And Adam, well, is the source of all humanity in Genesis. In other words, God used a specific lineage of Adam to solve the problem of all lineages. So, when God called Abraham, he always had Gentiles in mind. They are not an afterthought.

Third, since God sovereignly determined he would solve the Adam problem through Abraham (Genesis 12:3), the ultimate seed of which Isaac was only a type must come from Abraham’s line. That is the BLESSING that God closely protected in Genesis. When Abraham tried to help God out by impregnating Hagar, God told him Ishmael was not it. The promised son was yet to come. Eventually, Isaac came. And from Isaac, the blessing was passed to Jacob, then to Judah, Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Jesse, David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asaph, Jehoshaphat, Joram, …Jesus. This is why Biblical authors often take the pain to give us genealogies. Genealogies are not merely sedatives or boredom pills to swallow in church services. Jesus could not have been anything else but a Jew. To be anything else equals the abandonment of the Abraham Project.

Fourth, notice that Jesus being a Jew with a mission to other Jews does not mean he was for Jews only. (Actually, Jesus, being so kind, often did not stick to the script and addressed the needs of non-Jews even while saying he was sent to the Jews.) In a Biblical sense, Jesus was like the nuclear reactor of the Abraham Project, which badly needed a nuclear equivalent of CPR. If the Abraham Project could be successfully resuscitated and allowed to go to its intended completion, then the Adam problem would have been addressed. Now is not the time for details, but Jesus could not be the Savior of the world if he weren’t the Savior of the Jews first. Even a Gentile Jew knew this fact:

Romans 1:16 ESV
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

The salvation Jesus offered had to be for the Jews first before it could be for the Gentiles. The blessing must flow outwards from Abraham’s bosom. As the blog entry states, this fact is painted vividly in the book of Acts, which a Gentile wrote. Nobody seemed offended by this fact in the first century.

Now, does that mean Gentiles are an afterthought? If they are an afterthought, they became that when God chose Abraham, not when Jesus put on a body. The appearance of Jesus is according to divine will, and that is the way God would have it. Jesus’s mission must be to the Jews. Nevertheless, the result of the mission was such that there no longer could be “Jews or Gentiles.” That distinction is meaningless once the Abraham Problem is solved.

My Pastor friend made an observation but didn’t seem to appreciate the implications. The fact that most Jews of the first century did not accept Jesus as their Messiah, a black hole-sized problem that precipitated the writing of the book of Romans, especially chapters 9-11, but that the program continued, indicates that Jesus was not sent to the Jews merely for the Jews. The Jews, like Abraham, were a means to an end, but an end they may elect to participate in. It was never really merely about the Jews or even Abraham. The problem is bigger, being Adam-sized. That’s the original problem to solve. Hence, God’s redemptive program moved on despite Jewish rejection.

Now, in light of the anti-Semitic history of the church, we must clarify a few things. There are many reasons why most Jews didn’t accept Jesus. One very huge reason is that the Rabbis shielded the people from the truth, and many then, like today, only believed what their religious leaders told them. Nevertheless, a good number of Jews believed. In Acts 2, about 3000 Jews accepted Jesus in one meeting. And, of course, all the Apostles of Jesus were Jews. Today, in Israel and all over the world, Jews continue to discover Jesus. When I hear the stories of faith of many of these Jews, a common theme emerges: they have been systematically lied to for 2000 years! Even more relevant is the fact that Gentiles often play critical roles in the faith journey of these Jews.

Finally, we must say something about my friend’s reasoning that Gentiles should be practicing Judaism if Jesus was only sent to the Jews. I find this very, very helpful. I cannot stress this enough: what we now call Christianity was a form of Judaism in the first century, and there were other forms, such as the Qumran/Essene, Pharisee, and Sadducee Judaisms. Furthermore, we may learn something relevant from Rabbinic Judaism, the orthodox form of Judaism that survived from the Pharisaic strand. In the first century, the temple was the heart of Judaism for the Pharisees (and Sadducees). After the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 AD, the heart of Pharisaic Judaism, one would expect that to be the end of Judaism. In a sense, it ended a Judaism that focused on the temple. Nevertheless, a new form of Judaism arose from the Pharisaic strand a few centuries later and is still around today. It did not morph into any but “Judaism” just because some essential and even core elements of the older strands had to be rethought.

Also, recall that the term “Christian” was an outside label. It was a label people outside the group applied to the group. The followers of Jesus did not come up with it. Being an accurate and helpful label, it stuck. But the Apostles did not think they stopped being religious Jews. The Apostle and early Jewish believers knew they must rethink some elements of the traditional Judaisms they inherited in light of the Jesus event. Still, they didn’t think of the result of the rethinking as anything but Judaism. If anything, it was realized Judaism. They believed the Torah, Prophets, and the Writings pointed to Jesus. Just as Rabbinic Judaism could lay claim to “Judaism” even without the temple, sacrificial systems and priests, the Jewish Apostles of Jesus need not think that the resulting Jesus-inflected system is less than Judaism.

Indeed, even the resurrected Jesus thought similarly. On the famous road to Emmaus, some disciples were disheartened that Jesus was killed and that his dead body was missing after three days. Jesus appeared to them, disguised. To help them understand everything that has happened, we read:

Luke 24:25-27 ESV
[25] And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! [26] Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” [27] And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Notice verse 27 in particular. To present the facts about himself to these disciples, Jesus relied on the Pentateuch, the Jewish prophets, and all the Jewish Scriptures to make the point. So, even the resurrected Jesus did not think Judaism had become obsolete. Some significant parts must be understood afresh, but the program continues. As I often say and now repeat, we have about precisely zero chance of faithfully understanding Jesus and his mission without the Hebrew Bible.

So, my friend is correct after all. Gentile believers in Jesus should all practice Judaism. But wait, they already do!

Christianity Dissected, Featured Works

The Covenant Promise: Abraham’s Blessing, Lost Sheep of Israel, and Jesus

August 28, 2024 2 Comments

Why Abraham?

Scholars have long known that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are an extended prologue, an etiological grounding, among other things, of the accounts to follow. Chapter 12 features the calling of Abram. Why did the calling of Abraham become necessary?

Genesis begins by narrating how God, wanting to make creatures that can image him, prepares a fitting environment. He then creates Adam and Eve and gives them instructions to live by – instructions they can perform. However, other forces are vested in God’s project. Before long, the project was derailed when only two humans were involved. Things only got worse. By the time four named humans were in the project, there was a murder. By Genesis 6, things had gotten so bad that even God regretted creating humans. Clearly, the Project was not going well. What was God to do — scratch the project altogether? No, that would be a resounding victory for the sinister forces that thwarted his original plans. Start afresh? Yes, but not entirely from ground zero. So, in a sense, the restart is a continuation. Abraham would have to do.

What is Abraham’s qualifying attribute for this mission? The most noticeable feature is that he was childless, and his wife was past the age of childbearing. In other words, though God wants a nation of people, he has chosen a barren couple for that mission. God has picked someone who would require a miraculous intervention to get the project back on track. He said to Abram:

Genesis 12:2 ESV
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

Of course, becoming a great nation implies having many children and descendants. Sounding like a good deal to the ancient Near-Eastern businessman, Abram obeyed. While he was on his way to where God sent him away from his home country, at the oak of Moreh, and as if to make the point transparent:

Genesis 12:7 ESV
Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Again, Abram is assured that he will have children of his own. This, especially from Abram’s perspective, is a significant blessing.

It is worth stressing that before God called him, Abram was already a man of considerable material wealth (Gen 12:5). Of course, the rich can become more affluent. My point is that Abram was not a church rat when he was called. And as far as we know, he did not tithe or invoke any divine giving-and-receiving law to acquire his wealth. He seemed a regular, shrewd, Near-Eastern businessman. For emphasis, I repeat that Abram did not sow any seed before God told him he would inherit the land of the Canaanites. The only thing Abram, at this point, had given God was his obedience to leave Haran, his country.

Besides what Abram already had in Haran before Yahweh called him, the first material blessing he got was when Pharaoh treated Abram well because of Sarai (Gen 12:10-20). Notice, however, that this was a cunning and evil move: Abraham gave up his wife, the one through whom he was to become the father of many nations, for sexual exploitation to save his life! Put another way, the seed Abraham sowed to reap material gains here was his wife. Hence, whatever the pharaoh gave Abram was likely expected dowry. This indicates that Abram was not called because he was morally upright. Indeed, he would soon sleep with a slave girl, an act that likely would be a case of rape had the girl not been an enslaved person, who was likely 60 years younger. And when she became pregnant, Abram would let Sarai send her away without putting up a fight.

Even the famous encounter with Melchizedek does not teach anything about seed sowing, as I have written about elsewhere. In that encounter, Abraham once gave a tenth of the spoils of war to Melchizedek and then gave the rest to his men and the king of Sodom. He didn’t give out a dime of his own wealth. So, Abraham did not accrue material wealth through his encounter with Melchizedek.

So, God chose Abram in spite of Abram. Abraham was God’s means of getting the initial Adam Project back on track, though Abraham does not seem to know all that detail. God chose Abram so that he might become a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:3). However, as Bible students know all too well, even the Abraham Project would soon go off-track. Events and choices in Abraham’s lifetime may have sown the seeds of the derailment. In no time, even the Abraham Project would need a rescue. So, God needed to rescue the Abraham Project to infuse life into the Adam Project, his original intent. Here, then, is another central point in the developing story. Will God scratch the project and start afresh? God remains committed to his promises to Abraham, just as he did with the Adam Project. The plan must continue with Abraham, but how?

Jesus Sent Only to the Lost Sheep of Israel

Enters Jesus.

The Gospel according to Matthew is well-known in scholarly circles as the most Jewish among the four Gospel accounts. This observation is well grounded. Here is the very first sentence of Matthew’s Gospel:

Matthew 1:1 ESV
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

If a novel begins this way, readers would immediately know to expect that what follows will be deeply connected to David and Abraham. Matthew wastes no time in revealing that the story is about to tell is a continuation of the Abraham’s story. (The Davidic reference is Matthew’s way of telegraphing the legitimacy of Jesus’ Messiah claims.) Consider the following passages:

Matthew 10:5-7 ESV
[5] These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, [6] but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. [7] And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

Matthew 15:22-24 ESV
[22] And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” [23] But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” [24] He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

These passages have Jesus himself saying his primary target audience at that point in his ministry was the ethnic descendants of Abraham. The first passage even excludes a vast chunk of Abraham’s descendants, the Samaritans, who traced their origin from the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of ancient Israel. Instead, Jesus here focuses on the descendants of ancient Judah. Yes, Jesus would make exceptions and attend to the needs of non-Jews like the Canaanite woman here and a few Romans, but he understood his mission to be to the lost sheep of Israel. By “lost sheep of Israel,” Jesus referred to the entire nation of the Jews.

In light of sermons we have heard on this subject, we should ask: did Matthew faithfully reproduce Jesus’s statements – did Jesus really say he was sent only to ancient Israelites and not the whole world? The answer is Yes; Matthew faithfully represented Jesus’ words, and, in a manner of speaking, Jesus was ONLY sent to the ancient Israelites.

Recall that Abraham was called to put the Adam Project back on track. Through Abraham, all the nations of the earth were supposed to be blessed. But no seed of Abraham was capable of delivering, as they all soon went their separate ways. Hence, Jesus had to come as a seed of Abraham to effectuate the divine promise to Abraham. That is why he had to be born a Jew. It is also why the very first sentence in Matthew’s Gospel connects Jesus to Abraham. Furthermore, since the ancient Israelites were also called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, something they clearly were not in the first century, the Abraham Project must restart beginning with them. The Project needed priests to reveal the divine will to humans. Hence, it is no accident that all the early Apostles of Jesus were Jews. They had to be ethnic descendants of Abraham.

It is not only Matthew who realizes the connection between Jesus’ mission and the divine promise to Abraham. Even after the resurrection and just before the ascension, Luke writes of Jesus saying:

Acts 1:8 ESV
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Notice how this verse yet prioritizes the Jews, much like Matthew reports – and Luke was a Gentile. This verse is, in fact, a very accurate map and thesis statement for the book of Acts. The events recorded in Acts were about Jews and Judaism until Chapter 10 when we read about Cornelius. But before that, Philip preaches Christ in Samaria (Chapter 8), and, as it is well-known, Paul would take the message literally to the end of the then-known world, Spain. So, the message of Christ traveled precisely as he predicted: from Jerusalem, the headquarters, through Judea to Samaria, and then to the rest of the world.

So, Jesus was not (directly) sent to all of humanity. He could not have been so sent. He was sent to Abraham’s descendants, who would then reach the rest of the world just as God promised Abraham: through you, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Nevertheless, we read of Jesus occasionally “blessing” non-Jews like the Canaanite woman and a few Romans along the way. God is that gracious and kind.

After the message of Jesus reached the end of the earth, the ethnic component of the Abraham Project became redundant. This does not mean that Jews became useless or stopped playing active roles. It only means God had fulfilled his promise to Abraham. The new community God is gathering from all the nations, consistent with the promise to Abraham, can no longer be ethnically defined. The plan was always to create a multiethnic people group from the ethnic line Abraham started. In a multiethnic family, ethnic identity loses much of its meaning. That is why there can be no “Jews or Gentile” in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). Indeed, the new community inherits the description and function once given to only ethnic Israel: a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 1:6).

Tying it all together

Being the man who took the message of Jesus literally to the end of the then-known world, we should expect Paul to have a deep understanding of the divine program as revealed in Scripture. He tells his knowledge in the letter to the Galatians. According to the argument of Galatians, the promised Holy Spirit came through the lineage of Abraham:

Galatians 3:8 ESV
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

Paul here says the gospel of Jesus, which was not fully revealed until Paul’s time, was preached beforehand to Abraham. That is, the gospel did not start with Jesus. That gospel message is this: “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” What nations? The nations whose stories were covered in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10) and whose language God confused at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 before calling Abram in Genesis 12 – every nation outside Abraham’s lineage. God miraculously gave Abraham a family in the hope of using a descendant of that family to fix the problems Adam unleashed under the influence of sinister forces. That was always God’s plan. When God started afresh with Abraham, he engineered a solution for the nations. It was not an abandonment of the nations. The Gentiles (or the nations) were always going to be accepted by faith – by putting their trust in the faithfulness of God and his Messiah. And when they do, they will receive the Spirit of Jesus as a deposit guaranteeing things to come in the coming age. This, ultimately, is Abraham’s only relevant blessing to the world. It is not about material wealth, and it is certainly not about the land to which no non-Jew may make a claim.

As if to connect the dots, one of the first things the Spirit did upon breaking into human hearts in Acts 2 was a reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel just before Abram was called. The people’s languages at Babel were confused, so they could not understand one another (Genesis 11:7-9). In Acts 2:5, first, we are told that “there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” Notice again how even the Holy Spirit, who continues where Jesus left off, began with Jews. These were descendants of Jews exiled all over the nations through the invasion of foreign armies like the Assyrians and Babylonians for their disloyalty to God. God would collect them first before collecting the rest of the world. (That is what Paul meant by the Gospel being for/to the Jews first, and then the Gentiles in Romans 1:16.) Next, all these people who then spoke the languages of the nations of the world they were exiled to heard the Spirit-enabled Galilean disciples of Jesus speak in their various languages! This is a reversal of the events at Babel, which finally precipitated the calling of Abram.

Abraham’s only blessing to the world is Jesus, and Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks.