The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew
The manger sits inside a story older and bigger than a single night in Bethlehem. When we remember that Jesus was born a Jew—son of David, heir to the covenants—we recover the full weight of Advent and see how God kept precise promises to bless the whole world through Israel. That memory does more than enrich Christmas; it clarifies our mission and confronts the casual prejudices shaping today’s conversations.
We walk through Scripture’s insistence on Jesus’ lineage and why it mattered for every prophecy, festival, and symbol culminating in the cross and empty tomb. From there, we trace the historical turn: a church that began as a Jewish movement, a devastated Jerusalem, a rapid Gentile majority, and the sad rise of anti‑Jewish attitudes in Europe. Along the way, we examine how bad teaching, selective preaching, and cultural fear fueled scapegoating, and how law‑and‑gospel preaching resists that drift. You’ll hear practical tests to separate political critique from hidden bias and a simple question that exposes team‑sports thinking masquerading as moral clarity.
Most of all, we center the Christian posture Paul modeled—sorrow for unbelief, honor for Israel’s gifts, and love that longs for salvation. That means real friendships, not isolation; bridges, not walls; and a mission mindset that treats every headline as a reminder of souls Christ died to save. Let this conversation upgrade your Advent: the Jewishness of Jesus is not trivia, it’s the thread that ties promise to fulfillment and invites us to carry good news to both Jew and Gentile.
If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: where will you start building a bridge this week?
The ministry of Christian Life Resources promotes the sanctity of life and reaches hearts with the Gospel. We invite you to learn more about the work we're doing: https://christianliferesources.com/
On today's episode.
SPEAKER_00:Remembering or focusing on the Jewishness of Jesus, it can really enrich our celebration of the season of the festivals because it helps us more deeply appreciate God's plan for all the world's salvation and how He made it happen in just such a way so that you and I would have salvation, and so would Jesus' own people, and so would everyone. Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, and welcome back. I'm Christa Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samelson. And today we're gonna continue on doing some Christmas Advent themed episodes. In that spirit, we're gonna talk today about this title, uh, That Jesus Christ was born a Jew. This title, That Jesus Christ is born a Jew, is borrowed from an early writing of Martin Luther's. And while we're not gonna talk about Martin Luther's writing today on that topic, we are gonna use that topic, that idea, and the Christmas Advent season here too, to talk about what that title might ask us to consider. And some of these questions and things that we'd hope to look at and consider today might be, you know, what um does the fact that Jesus was Jewish mean for us as Christians? And most as uh as Gentile Christians too, when it comes to how we feel about, think about, talk about, and otherwise uh deal with Jewish people, specifically to, and we hope to touch on the topic as well, if any kind of anti-Semitism is compatible with being a Christian. So these are some of the things we hope to talk about and discuss today. A place to just kind of start is I guess like the underlying assumption here is that Jesus was Jewish. And so, I mean, is there any any doubt in that? Um, any wiggle room, or is that a a pretty true, firm statement to say?
SPEAKER_00:There is no doubt, you know, so long as you're taking the scripture and reality as your your your source there. Uh, not only does scripture make it exceptionally and explicitly clear, but being Jewish was part of the whole point. He was born the king of the Jews, the son of David. It's essential really to his identity, uh, even even to his mission. Now, people might want to imagine him as as something else or or just ignore his uh his ancestry and his identity, but but the Bible doesn't really allow for that. Uh, so the Christian faith doesn't really allow for that either. It's uh fairly famous uh picture in um certain uh religious circles of of this really wonderful, friendly looking Jesus who has blonde hair and blue eyes. It's like we don't know exactly what Jesus looked like, but we can we can be pretty sure he looked nothing like that. He was a Middle Eastern Jew. And even most of the uh um stuff from Europe in the Middle Ages and things like that, you know, they he he looked European. He he didn't really look uh that Jewish. And that's uh that's part of the reason many people find it easy to think of Jesus as not being particularly Jewish if they think of him that way at all.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell A lot of times that you get that approach to Jesus, like you you ignore his Jewish roots because people try to reduce him down to basically a good example that we should all follow. It's interesting. This is it's the most wonderful time of the year. It's also the most annoying time of the year.
SPEAKER_01:You know, when people uh someone's the Grinch. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that would be me. But but it can't it can be because y you listen to newscasts or you listen to talk shows and so forth, and they try to like dummy the season down to its lowest denominator, which is we should all be loving, we should all carry care for each other. That's really what Christmas is all about. And so and I think as a result, people who have trouble with Jesus being Jewish are inclined to say, well, that doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter as long as as long as we kind of capture his spirit of of acceptance and understanding.
SPEAKER_01:Why is it easy for Christian Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, to forget or at least discount the fact that Jesus is 100% Jewish?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Oh, we talked about some of the things already. Um one we didn't mention was you know, all that stuff happened a long time ago in a in a a land far away. It's it's just you know so distant from us that we just don't don't really think about that. You know, and and there are lots of Christians who really the entire way that they think about their faith, history starts at most a hundred years ago. That that's that's part of part of the thing. And and I I'd say another part of it is that in another context, the people we'd expect to be saying, hey, this is our guy. You gotta remember that. Most Jews today are are not all that eager to say, by the way, the central figure to Christians' religion, he's actually Jewish. That's not something that they're necessarily going to be emphasizing and advocating for.
SPEAKER_03:You know, when you go in in Sunday school and so forth growing up, it was the the New Testament stories that really resonated, at least for me as a child. I was raised public school, so I didn't have Christian day school, you know, education on the Bible stories. So got everything from whatever my parents taught at home or what we got at church on Sunday in the worship service and in Sunday school. And there were the Old Testament stories that stood out, but they were mostly thematic, like Noah and the Ark and uh the uh Daniel and the Lion's Den and so forth. You just didn't have you didn't talk about Jesus within the context of the Old Testament. And as I look back, I often wondered if I were to have reworked the Sunday school curriculum. You know, the the fact that out of all of the the nations of the world, one had to be picked through whom the Savior was going to come, and and God said, I I choose the Jewish nation. And it's interesting because he doesn't even say because they were the best. He just says, I chose them. That was my choice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. We um we hear that phrase too when describing Jesus, the king of the Jews. And how does that phrase in particular really shape and enrich our faith as Christians in remembering and thinking about Jesus, not just being any Jewish guy?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell For any of us, it's the the way that we are American or Chinese or Venezuelan or Russian or whatever. It's just because of where we were born and whom we were born to. But Jesus had to be Jewish. It wasn't just an accidental kind of thing, the the way that's just the way it worked out on that day in that place. He had to be Jewish so that all of God's promises and the prophecies of the Old Testament would be fulfilled. And he was, and they were.
SPEAKER_03:And we see evidence, I mean, really the lot of the the hard stuff that's hard to read in the Old Testament is the story of the people not listening, not staying pure, not not being mindful of just what it what it meant at that time to be Jewish. And that God, you are God's people, chosen for the line of the Savior.
SPEAKER_01:After Jesus was born, too, and you know, he lived on the earth and and then was resurrected. After that, all of the disciples went out. And but we do get some glimpse like in Acts and in the epistles, too, that the Jewish leaders, uh many of them who didn't put their trust in Jesus began to oppose and even persecute Christians. And uh, and you know, we we see that after Pentecost, but after maybe about a hundred years or something, that didn't really happen anymore, right? And so there wasn't really this, I guess, this push from the Jewish people to stop Christianity. Is that fair assessment of that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, certainly kind of on an individual level or you know, this this particular community level, you would have seen that, but there were there there were spiritual aspects of it, things that we would credit the the Holy Spirit for, and and things that were just more kind of the way history worked out that that played a role in that. As as the Christian church grew and spread throughout the Mediterranean and really, you know, the the world, it became more Gentile than Jewish. When it first started, it was majority Jewish, and but that changed, you know, particularly through through the mission work of Paul. And Jews who had started believing in Jesus, well, they began identifying less as Jews and more as Christians. And so they kind of lost that that identity there. Eventually it worked out, you know, and this actually happened pretty fast. Jews were Jews and Christians were Christians, and those lines of division were were pretty sharp because the the Jews who hadn't gone over to believe in Jesus, they kind of like they it was almost like a point of pride and and identity that said, no, no, no, we're we're we're not we're not crossing over there. And so the lines of division were firm. And and what that meant is that there was a lot less contact between Christians and Jews as well. The historical fact is that in AD 70, the Romans leveled Jerusalem and they ended up kicking a lot of the Jews out of Judea and Galilee. And um, so there was no longer a place where the Jews w had the authority. So they couldn't really do much of anything to oppress Christians uh anymore. And uh so it eventually what had been Jewish oppression of Christians stopped, and eventually it went the other direction.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell, which of course gets us into the whole um anti-Semitic um material that uh we experience today. You know, it was interesting. I think a lot of people have to understand as Jeff was kind of getting into the history of it. Uh of course, history is my my favorite thing in life.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Next to Diane. Next to Diane, yes.
SPEAKER_03:Historically, I because I always was wondering with anti-Semitism, we're hearing a lot about it. In fact, there were some some headlines today in some of the news feeds I get about the rise of antisemitism and how it you know really picked up since twenty twenty-three when the Palestinians and the Gaza thing? The Gaza thing, yeah. Right. Yeah, when that happened, that really kind of uh spiked it dramatically, uh, anti-Semitism. And I of course I I began to wonder what what is that all about? And it goes back right not long after uh Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, uh when um Martian, M-A-R-C-I-O-N, I believe it is, Martian, he came out and his heresy was that we we really don't need the Old Testament. They were following kind of a uh a Jewish god, a god that he did not favor. And of course, Martian was marked as kind of a heretic. And but so he kind of rejected that. And then um It wasn't kinda. Yeah, he wasn't he was a heretic. But that heresy, you know, in any culture, in order to be called heresy, has to have a following. So there are people who gathered around people who whose itching ears were were affected by what he was teaching. And that became a problem. And then it grew. You know, even Justin Martyr, he had trouble, and then it kind of transitioned from a religious difference to a political difference, and that kind of took off in the like 18th, 19th centuries.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Yeah. So what it with Bob kind of describing here, uh the the historical framework um for why there has been so much mistreatment of the Jews by b maybe even people too like that call themselves Christians. Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Most of what we can identify kind of historically there is is in Europe. Uh I mean that's kind of where what the history that we have. Clearly there was anti-Jewish sentiment in other places where the Jews were. Uh I mean, actually, if you uh look at the history of Islam, there was a lot of that going on, and uh one of the most uh horrific uh things of uh of Mohammed's history was uh basically wiping out an entire tribal group of uh of Jews that he had upset him. But anyway, in Europe, Jews lived among Christian peoples, but they mostly lived apart and kept themselves separate in many ways. Some of this was their decision, okay, we want to maintain our identity and our customs and our religion. Some of it was just the fact that by not being Christian, they were excluded from any kind of community activities that involved the church. If everybody in the community is joining together for their Christmas celebrations, the Jews are going to be on the outside of that, obviously. Being permanent outsiders made them easy scapegoats, though. Whenever anything went wrong in the community, when there were economic troubles, when there were plagues and things like that, everybody's looking for somebody to blame, and who's the easiest to to blame? It's not anybody in your family. It's not your neighbor. No, it's the people who are on the outside. And so they they became very easy scapegoats for that. It's not excusing any of it, it's just explaining it. And uh it also happened uh that uh many Jews in many communities, they had roles as merchants, as bankers, and uh as they managed to get ahead, that caused resentment as well. Non-Jewish people's like, well, they're not like us, and they're not Christians like us, and they shouldn't be getting ahead. And they, you know, i it it was just kind of a natural kind of human thing going on there. But I I'd say that the main thing that we should remember his Christians is that when the scriptures, and especially law and gospel, are not preached and taught faithfully and fully, wrong ideas like hatred of Jews can take root and can flourish among both the the laity and the clergy. And that happened because for a long time, for centuries, things weren't being taught right.
SPEAKER_03:That's always been a problem. People develop a bias, and biases have a way of of maturing in an educational vacuum. They get a notion, and the notion seems appealing for for whatever reason. When Jeff was talking about the the Jewish community was really got into the banking industries and the high commerce and everything, that happened to coincide at a time in history where Christians were being encouraged to be charitable, give away. You shouldn't be pursuing marketing and money and that kind of stuff. So they they virtually left a void in commerce that was filled by by the Jewish community, and then it became then it was like their fault for for filling the void. And you know, when you start digging deep into where the prejudices and the biases come from in history, it's kind of alarming. And you you know, it's it's one of those that when you're in the middle of it, you don't perceive it. But when you're on the outside looking at it, you're going, my goodness, how did they how did they miss it? But part of it is selective preaching of the parts of the Bible that you like. I remember, and this is a little bit of coming at it from the side, but I remember when I was at the seminary, I was already very involved in pro-life work. And my um my homiletics professor said to me, you know, just remember, every sermon can't be about pro-life. You know, it at his point was, you know, you preach what we call the pericope series. It was it was a defined set of readings. And I used to, as a pew sitter until that point, I used to used to drive me crazy. It's like we need to talk about this or we need to talk about that. But instead, you know, we it was like the re the assigned readings for that Sunday were, and that's what they went. Well, that's that's how you develop bias preaching. You know, you you begin to feel like I need to I need to preach about all the political things going on today, or I need to preach about all that's going wrong. And then all of a sudden you start getting into your biases and prejudices and then anti-Semitism, and that's why you'll find sermons written that were quite anti-Semitic, you know, that were shocking that way.
SPEAKER_00:Alternatively, you also have people who just like, oh no, no, we we can't talk about anything that's actually an issue.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so nothing ever gets uh addressed and therefore never never gets corrected either. Aaron Powell Equally bad.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Equally bad.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, and I mean I think too, you know, we've talked uh a bit about just Christians' attitude towards Jewish people. I mean, just to clear up any confusion here, what is our attitude as Christ followers? What should be our attitude towards Jewish people?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Stated simply, it should be love and a deep desire to see them put their faith in Jesus, their Messiah, and be saved. They are lost sheep who uh we want brought into the fold. I mean, we we want this, that that just like Jesus did, because he died for them as well. Paul, the Apostle Paul, suffered pretty severely from persecution by Jewish people, people who opposed what he was uh saying and doing. But he still said in in in Romans, My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continuous pain in my heart, for I almost wish that I myself could be cursed and separated from Christ in place of my brothers, my relatives according to the flesh, those who are Israelites. Theirs are the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them according to the flesh came the Christ who is God over all, eternally blessed. Amen. He's saying that he'd be just about willing to give up his own salvation to see his fellow Jews saved. That's scripture, you know. We Christians should read that and say, Well, this should be really important to us too.
SPEAKER_03:And so people would say, Well, but what didn't didn't he speak harshly about Pharisees? Didn't he speak har you know, clear the temple, didn't he do all these things? Well, you gotta you know read it carefully because where was where was the anger, the righteous anger, directed? It was directed towards leaders who mislead, religious leaders who are not speaking the truth. Everything about, you know, when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he he wept for the Jewish people, and it's the religious leaders. And and by the way, and it wasn't just the religious leaders, uh the Jewish religious leaders, uh when um Paul wrote to Timothy, you know, he talked about other people who were teaching contrary to the word of God. Again, the criticism is harsh. That that's where it should be, whether it's the Gentile or the Jewish people who are leading others astray, or the Muslim people, or anybody who, in the role of the instructor, is leading them astray, those are the ones that the anger was reserved for, and the harsh words. Everyone else, you turn the other cheek, you walk the extra mile, you you you look at and the and the thing is that you've heard me harp on this a number of times on you know, you're either bridge building or wall building. And when I um when I look at the anti-Semitism that has gone on, I keep asking myself, Wh where in the world is there a bridge? There's just no bridge here.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell When you were saying to um the Paul Paul's words from Roman um Jeff That's one of the saddest things in scripture for me is to see God's relentless love for the Jewish people, I mean, in particular, setting them apart, bringing them, giving them the Messiah. And then I mean, I almost just like think it's one of those things like, okay, like if David and all the Jewish people would have seen how the story would go and that their own people were would reject the Messiah. It's just one of I I it's just heartbreaking to me. I just think that that is just one of the saddest things. I mean, it's wonderful, like, and I know I I mean for that we have Jesus and we're God's people, and I understand that I'm a child of Abraham and you know, and all that kind of stuff. But it is just really a really sad thing. Um and I I just I feel that too in in the words you read from Paul as well.
SPEAKER_00:Where I went to to college the the first time around, there was a really large percentage of the the student body there. And some people even said that it was majority uh there. I I don't know if it was ever quite that much, but they were you know very visible. There were some really, you know, humanly speaking, good people uh among them. I I mean they're they were they were friends and things like that. And they just exactly like you said, it was heartbreaking, you know, to realize that a a real strong sense of, no, I'm Jewish, this can never be. I, you know, um, you know, this is our identity. I can't be a Christian. I I I have no interest in this. They they could you know be complete i in a way. And uh yeah, uh just heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_03:Mm-hmm. You know, I've I've never understood uh anti-Semitism. I mean, I've I've never encountered it. I've worked with with Jewish people, and uh I too have had classmates and friends that were Jewish going through the public system that I did. And um, even when I was a student at Bethany, there were uh there were Muslims uh attending Bethany Lutheran College that you get to know, although they very much stay to themselves. But there's kind of a consistent theme that has come through all of this that I think is definitely applicable to what we are all about as Christians, what we're about as Christian life resources, and so forth, and that is that when you tend to isolate yourself, first of all you gather around yourself people who are just like you. That's because you have all com commonality with, you know, so you so your your best friends are are people who who send their children to the same school, you send your children to go to the same church, that kind of stuff. And as a result, the mission field becomes the neglected field. And when you lose sight of the fact that those who are not part of your inner circle are to be part of your circle and are the are the mission field that you stop interacting, you know, when when Jeff's talking about, well, and they were my friends, they were you know, got along with them. That I mean, that's absolutely critical. Now, when we talk about the work we do at CLR and so forth, uh I remember once um doing a presentation at a conference and talking about what what happens to our preschools and so forth when we get homosexual parents uh sending their children to our preschool. And I remember you know, I said, So what do you do? You know, uh the people in the congregation are complaining that they thought the preschool was going to be all Christ-oriented and everything, and now we got these gay parents coming in. And the one the one pastor said, Well, you just have to tell them that they're just not our kind of people. And I said, Well, that's outreach for you. You know, and this topic when when you distributed the the notes on this, I did a kind of a deep dive, you know, because it's to me it's really important to understand prejudices and inner hidden prejudices and so forth. Because I d I'm not familiar with this. You know, uh yeah, my my mother is is is Dutch and her relatives have married from other cultures and everything. It just was never something that we talked about in our community, in our in our household. And so I when I was digging deep into it, I d I that's the thread I saw coming up time and time again, was that you begin to kind of you know you create this circle and it's very tight, and so all of your all of your acquaintances think and talk like you, and then all of a sudden you kind of forget that that's the field out there. And and so you isolate because because right now, I don't know, you know, of the people who listen to this podcast, how many of you know Jewish people? I mean, really know Jewish people. You might know of someone who is Jewish, but count them as friends. Probably not many. Why? Because is it it's become a neglected mission field?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I think too like just with this topic of antisemitism as well, it's really on the rise, Bub's mentioned that and everything. And I mean, it does make you just kind of think like, huh, like what's what's going on here? Why is this such a a serious problem, or is it serious, and what can we really think about with with all of it?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Well, starting with the is it serious or not, I'd say yes, uh it it it is. What's particularly concerning right now is that they're this is documented, you know, that many putatively Christian young people, particularly men and boys, seem to be adopting the anti-Semitic attitudes, hook line and sinker from whatever we're talking about, the sources of of it might be. They're adopting it. And and part of it, I think, is a sense of gives them a greater identity. You know, so kind of what like what Bob was talking about with you know, the we're drawing the circle in. You know, they're on the outside and we're on the in. We're the good people, and therefore anybody who's not with us is is the bad. Part of it is the appeal also is that it's kind of transgressive because it it's a it's a somewhat safe transgressive. You know, they're they're not being, you know, really anti-Muslim because that could cause them actual like physical problem, but it's relatively safe for them to have these anti-Semitic attitudes. And you know, it's just enough of a bad boy idea that it's like, oh yeah, this makes us cool. This makes us in or whatever. Um and that's something that really is anti-Christian because transgression is what we need forgiveness for. Um it's it's what uh we repent of, what we leave behind. Uh, it can't be something that we embrace and treat as as a good thing. And since it's gr you know, the anti-Semitism is growing, that should make it a matter of of great concern for Christians. It's it's not something that we can just ignore or think of as only a problem for other people who have nothing to do with us. It's you know it's happening among us, and uh we we need to be aware of it.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Powell I've read some of the writings of of the anti-Semitic voices today. And you know, they'll argue they'll be defensive and they'll they'll argue that well, it's it's the politics of it. It's you know the the Jewish nation, uh uh they're oppressive, they're uh those kinds of kinds of arguments. And uh but but but what I find interesting is that when you start digging deeper and deeper into it, and part of this goes all the way back to World War II and to the rise of Nazism, but what they oftentimes will do is they'll they will look for support, you know, that's called confirmation bias, but they'll look for support for their position uh in religious writings. And uh that's what that's what Hitler had done. You know, he had found some religious writings that spoke about we should be following the New Testament and the New Testament rules, and then pretty soon they begin to exaggerate, they they pull out things out of context, start quoting them, and then so so oftentimes what becomes a political position also they feel has strong religious roots. And if you're listening to this and you might think, yeah, but I'm really not happy with everything Israel's done on a political level and everything. First of all, I grew up during the Cold War. I grew up during the time when Russia was considered to be the the great danger and maybe it it is again today. So I d I and I know how it works, you know, you hear it enough, and I remember going to school and being told we would practice air ray drills when I was in school. And there were I remember that the there were the the signage that would show where we could go in the school in case there was which I always thought, what are the odds of bombing in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin? But either way, you know, we had to go through these drills and everything. So I have to admit that when we were approached to do some work in uh Novosibirsk, which is Russia, all of a sudden those inner biases came back. Yeah, you're thinking, Wait, wait, these aren't these the bad guys, aren't they the enemy? Christians don't have the luxury of picking and choosing like that. Jesus chose to eat and drink with the most unpopular people. It's bad enough they weren't liked by the governing authorities. They weren't even liked by the religious leaders. So th it was like nobody liked them. And that's who he chose to to spend time with. And I just think when when Christians become so ideologically seated in a position uh that they are the bad people, they are the wicked people, they are the the Jesus killers, they are whatever whatever they want to write and so forth, when they become so set on that, uh doggone it, take a look in the mirror and just start remembering, you know, who you are and what was done to save you. That's how bad you were. You are. And that's often lost. And that and it's funny because uh well, and I've I've argued this before, introspection, I think, is the number one lost feature of human existence today.
SPEAKER_01:One with religious writings, I know like Luther said some things about Jews. I don't know how much we're gonna, you know, get into that and stuff as as well. But you know, there is that. And and then also too, you know, as Bob was also talking to just this idea that I mean, and I've heard it too, like where people are like, oh, I don't have a problem with the Jewish people, but I do have a problem with the modern state of Israel and you know everything that's going on there. You know, I mean, is is that like an okay stance to have, or um, you know, just to kind of separate those types of things? And what would we say in response to that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it is certainly possible to only have a problem with the modern state of Israel. And it's not necessarily our place to judge other people when they're they're making that argument. But that argument is often just a way to hide what's really going on. And a lot of times people aren't even aware of the fact that they're it's just a cover for what's what's really going on with them. Scratch the surface, dig a little deeper, and one frequently finds that the reason people have a problem with Israel existing as a state uh has more to do with Israelis being Jewish than any other consideration. One test, if this is you, give yourself this test. Compare how you you treat or think about Israel with uh how you think about or treat non-Jewish nations that might be in a similar kind of situation. If you find that you're always condemning the Israel for things that you're not condemning other nations for, then you realize, okay, there's something else going on here, and it's probably something about the fact that they're Jewish, and it's something more than than anti-Zionism going on. There are political reasons, uh, economic reasons, whatever, that you can say, well, yeah, I I don't quite agree with with with with what Israel's doing or how they're handling X, Y, or Z. Um, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you think that the entire population of that country sh or it shouldn't mean that you think the entire population of that country should be uh wiped out or moved somewhere else or or or or somehow basically left defenseless to you know in the face of their enemies. We need to think these things through a little more.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Powell Part of this is just venerating political issues to the level of a religion almost. It seems to be what goes on. I wrestle with this because I have a I have a pretty strict practice that I do. I start my day by doing my reading and I try to read three newspapers and I watch a couple of different news shows and so forth, trying to get as much of a balance of the news and everything. And I you know, I've I've been wrestling for a long time over what's what's going on. What you know, why is there such dark, you know, deep divides even politically within our own country and so forth. You know what it is? It's it's all NFL. You know, it's not about eating food, which is uh what that great commercial is all about. But it it's uh like competitive sports. Your team is this, my team is that, and my team's got a wind, and so I buy only colors that match my team, and you buy only colors that match your team, and then I'll put out flags on my yard to match my team, and you put out flags in your yard. And then we look for little incremental wins for our team over your team and so forth. And then pretty soon we begin to lose sight of the fact that none of this is glorifying God. It's just playing for a kingdom on earth, and that's I think really what what happens is that anybody who says that everything Israel's doing has been all correct politically or on a government level, first of all, just plain doesn't understand original sin. It's just not possible that everything they did is correct. Now, the same is true for us. Say everything we're doing is correct. It's just not possible. I mean, you have to you have to translate everything into spiritual terms and you have to see them as a mission field. One of the problems I have with the politics around the whole Israeli thing is that nobody talks that way. Not our government leaders, not their government leaders, whether we're talking about isolating another country because they pick on Israel or isolating Israel because they pick on other countries and so forth. They all are the mission field. And you cannot do that. You might talk about strategy to try to protect your people that you have to do, but that doesn't remove them from being the mission field.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Well, um I think there's probably a lot more we could say on this topic too. Jeff's got uh three more pages here. But any any final takeaways to just give our audience as we kind of wrap up this topic?
SPEAKER_00:Just point out, I I think Bob is talking about the mission field, has certainly stressed this. It does actual damage to our Christian witness and to our pro-life position, even if we are anti-Semitic or if we turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism uh with among us. But um just getting back to the season here, remembering or focusing on the the Jewishness of Jesus, it can really enrich our celebration of the season of the festivals, because it it it helps us uh more deeply appreciate God's plan for all the world's salvation and how he made it happen in just such a way so that you and I would have salvation, and so would Jesus' own people, and so would everyone.
SPEAKER_03:When Paul was making the case that he now was going to be the preacher to the Gentiles, first of all, that ran contrary to his own upbringing, and it was running against the grain of the Jewish people and so forth. Nowadays, as Gentiles, uh, we have to adopt kind of that Pauline uh attitude uh towards the Jewish nation. They are we are also the ambassadors to them. You look back over the biblical testimony, there were a lot of different tribes that God could have brought the Savior through. What an incredible blessing for Israel that he chose them. The fact that they didn't always appreciate it as a as a nation, and the fact that even today anti-Semitics don't appreciate that is terribly sad. But uh we don't lose ourselves in those uh disagreements. Instead, we continue to preach the story of of Advent and then of Christmas and then of Easter. And this was the way God brought about our own salvation.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you both for the information and the topic today. And if you have any questions on this topic, please reach out to us. You can go to lifechallenges.us and we'd love to hear from you. We look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot. Bye.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us at podcast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit Christianliferesources.com. May God give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
