Do Christians have a Biblical mandate to support the policies of the current nation state of Israel? Does Genesis 12 say that Christians today must support Israel in order to be blessed?
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. This is part two of yesterday's episode about this debate that Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson had. They were going back and forth on why America should support Israel or not, or what we should do with Iran and bombing them. And there was a bit of a snarky and defensive,
not super helpful back and forth around Genesis 12. There's so much to talk about on this topic, it's really hard to do, and you can go in a million different directions and give like a hundred different sermons on this. So I want to try to make it as clear as I can
in about five minutes. So Ted Cruz was making the argument that he supports Israel because of what it says in Genesis 12. Now he went on and we played the whole five minute back and forth in yesterday's episode. If you want to hear it again,
I don't want to play it here again, because I think it's so snarky and it's not a good vibe. So let me just paraphrase it. But if you want to hear it, you can go back to yesterday's episode. So Ted Cruz says, I support Israel because of Genesis 12. And then he goes on and says, that's just me. There's also all these other secular reasons to support Israel over Iran as well. And that's what I stand by, but just know,
Ted Cruz says for me, it's Genesis 12. What is Genesis 12 to say? It says, now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse." So Ted Cruz says, the Bible says those who bless Israel will be blessed so I'm gonna bless Israel. Okay that's what I want to address here. What Ted Cruz just articulated there is a very popular belief in evangelical circles. Now right now we can go into a
whole rabbit hole about dispensationalism is what it's called, but I just want to try to stay focused here and let me come out with my statement. I do not believe that the Bible gives a biblical mandate to support the political or military decisions of the current nation of Israel. I say this as a massive supporter of Israel, as a Zionist. A Zionist is someone who supports a Jewish homeland. I want them to be exactly where they are, if not a Jewish homeland. I want them to be exactly where
they are if not a bigger one. But that statement in Genesis 12 is not about Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of today. I think this is the clearest explanation that I can give. There are three groups that we're dealing with here. The first group is national Israel. These are the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the Jewish people as a nation. This is the nation that God chose to give his law and promises and covenants to. Chose to give it to this people, this nation, national Israel over any other group of people. It's the first group.
Second group, true Israel, as it's called. It's often called the faithful remnant. I like the word remnant. These this is a subset of national Israel. These are the remnant, the people who truly believed and trusted God. And there's always a faithful remnant within Israel who remained faithful to
God. Kings 19, 18 talks about Elijah and God reserved 7,000 people in Israel who did not bow down to Baal and kiss the statue. Romans 9 6 says, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Hold on, Israel, Israel, not all from Israel belong to... what is that? Paul is expressing his broken heart over the fact that so many Jewish people rejected Christ as the Messiah and as the true way to salvation. The national Israel and what some call the true
Israel. Then you have the third group called the church. This is the body of all believers in Jesus Christ, whether you're Jewish or Gentile. The word church, the etymology of the word church, is a body of Christian believers. These three groups are very important to understand for Romans 11. Paul here is talking about an olive tree. This olive tree represents the nation of Israel. The people who do not believe in Jesus are branches that have been broken off from the olive tree. Believing Gentiles are grafted onto the
tree. Now Paul says in this section here, you Gentiles don't go thinking that you're any better than Jewish people. He said, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You're merely a branch grafted on to a root, to a tree that already exists with roots. Now what's important about, well, one of the things that's important about this analogy is God did not, and Paul did not talk about two trees that are planted. There's not a Jewish tree and a Gentile tree.
There's one tree throughout the whole thing. And God did not cut down the old tree. Same tree. Now some branches have been cut off, but Gentiles grafted into that same covenantial promises made throughout the whole Bible. Now Paul speaks in the beginning of Romans.
He says Jews are not guaranteed salvation because of their privileges as Jews. Faith is the key. Faith in what? Faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Galatians 3.14, the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that he might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Galatians 3 29, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abram's seed and heirs according to the promise. Incredible. If you believe in Jesus
Christ, then you are counted righteous by faith in the same way that Abraham was. If you are in Christ, then you are partakers of the blessing of Israel in the redemptive work of Jesus. You become the spiritual descendants of Abraham. So Israel here is the church, not a government created in 1948. And faith is the key, not ethnicity, not works. Faith. And Paul's arguing here that all who
believe in Jesus are children of Abraham. That's a lot. It's been seven minutes. That's a ton of stuff. There's books's a lot. It's been seven minutes. That's a ton of stuff. There's books and books and books and books, books been written about this. I hope that's a some step forward towards clarity. And I always love when there's moments like this.
We do this on the show from time to time, when I say, hey, listen, many things can be true at the same time. And I go through maybe 10 things that are all true. And it seems like they can't all be true. Maybe something seemed contradictory or it's not even that. It's more like, well, hold on. I'm on this team and this team says that only this is true. And that other team says that thing's true. And it's like, well, sometimes both things are true and you may not, it may not seem like it the actions they've taken against Iran.
I agree with what they've done in Gaza with Hamas. I think I'm a Zionist as you can be. I think I'd love to hear someone who I'd love to see or someone like articulate like the 10 things of Zionism. Like I probably agree with all 10 of them. All those things are true. And Christians are under no
biblical mandate to support anything that this current nation state of Israel does. And I happen to support the things that this current nation state is doing. And there's only one way to be grafted into the olive tree. And that is faith in Jesus Christ. The only way this grafting is not based on lineage. It's not based on ethnicity, but on faith and faith alone. Mike Slater dot locals.com transcript commercial free on the website. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.
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