How Should Christians Relate To Their Jewish Neighbors (Romans Week 24) by Rich Nathan

How should followers of Jesus think about the Jewish people in a time of rising antisemitism? In this message from Romans 11:25–36, we explore God's enduring covenant faithfulness to Israel, His promise that His gifts and calling are irrevocable, and His future purposes for the Jewish people. Rather than responding with pride or hostility, Christians are called to reject antisemitism, walk in humility, and bear faithful witness to the Jewish Messiah with genuine love, knowing that God's mercy extends to all who trust in Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Well good morning. We just get adjusted here. How many of you are watching the World Cup? Yeah. Oh, five of you. Good. Americans. We have no right to host this. The rest of the world is going crazy, and you know, we're like, I just watched Netflix last evening. Well, let me begin. You know, I've been preaching for 45 years, and it occurred to me as I was putting the message together that in all the years I've preached, uh, even though I'm Jewish, I have never done a single message about anti-Semitism or even a, you know, a significant part of a message. I've I've preached often, if you've heard me preach over the years, I've preached often about racism. I've I've done a number of sermons about uh immigrants and anti-immigrant sentiment in America, but I've never spoken about anti-semitism. And uh this text, Romans 11, gives me an opportunity to uh speak about this. And and you know, there's been such a extraordinary increase in anti-Semitic uh incidents in the United States and around the world that this is a moment where Christians really need to wake up to what's happening uh globally and in the United States. Um last year, Governor Shapiro, who is Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, had his home attacked. Uh a uh anti-Semitic uh activist attempted to uh uh burn down uh Governor Shapiro's home on the first night of Passover. Uh the Shapiro's were uh in bed asleep after celebrating Seder dinner, and uh a man smashed through, uh climbed over the uh uh you know gate that was guarding uh the governor's home, took a sledgehammer, smashed through a window, and then threw a Molotov cocktail into his house, causing an explosion and setting the home on fire. Fortunately, the governor, along with his wife and children, escaped unharmed. But these number the number of anti-Semitic attacks around the world are too many to tally or or even to summarize. Uh one of the most awful just happened this past December on a beach outside of Sydney, Australia. A bunch of Jewish folks had gathered to celebrate Hanukkah in a party, and two gunmen opened fire, and it was only the unbelievable courage of an unarmed bystander who tackled one of the gunmen and brought him to the ground that caused this massacre to be uh to total uh uh much lower than it otherwise would. But 14 men, women, and children were murdered, and 40 were injured. The New York Times recently published an article, an editorial by Nick Christoff alleging, without any evidence whatever, that Israel was training dogs to have sex with Palestinian prisoners. It was so insane that hundreds of people wrote in objecting to this absurd claim by the nation's most read newspaper. The Times refused to print a retraction, and now millions of people around the world believe that Israel trains dogs to have sex with Palestinian male prisoners in the UK just in the past three months. Attackers randomly stabbed two Jewish men who were wearing identifiably Jewish garb and a yarmulke, you know, the Jewish skull cap. Arsonists attacked, three synagogues, an educational building, and four Jewish ambulances. Synagogues have been set on fire in Toronto, in Montreal, mobs attacked, Jews coming out of synagogue in New York and in LA, and this is just in the last few months. The worst massacre after the Holocaust occurred, of course, on October 7th, 2023, when Hamas terrorists went over the border into Israel, slaughtered more than 1,300 men and women and children, raped dozens and dozens of Israeli women. A few days later, after this attack, and before Israel counter-attacked in Gaza, before they countered, a mob gathered in Sydney, Australia, marched around the Sydney Opera House screaming, gas the Jews. Gas all the Jews. Folks around the world try to say that, well, we're making a distinction between the policies of Israel and Jewish individuals. How does gas the Jews tie into that apologetic? On college campuses like Columbia University, protesters yelled, go back to Poland, gas the Jews, to Jewish students who were ostensibly, you know, were obviously Jewish wearing Jewish stars of David or wearing yarmulkes. At Cornell University, a Cornell professor said after the reports came out that 1,300 Jews were massacred in Israel, that dozens and dozens of women were raped. This Cornell professor said that the attack was exhilarating. On the UCLA campus, protesters built barricades, and if anyone was obviously Jewish, they could not cross the quad. The only way to enter the quad on the UCLA campus was to wear a wristband saying that you believed in the elimination of the State of Israel. I could multiply these incidents by the hundreds in the last five years. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks anti-Semitic incidents, said that the number of incidents against Jews in America have quadrupled in the last four years. And I'm not just talking about verbal statements where somebody is offended. I'm talking about arson bombings of synagogues driving a car into a reformed synagogue like this one, the largest reformed synagogue in America, is outside of Detroit. A man drove a truck into the synagogue with 150 children in childcare in the basement, began firing guns and wanted to blow the synagogue up. There have been rallies against Jews with explicitly anti-Semitic language. In the midst of what is going on in America and globally, how should Christians relate to their Jewish neighbors, Jewish employers, Jewish friends, Jews in their own families? How should we relate to Jewish people? That's what I want to talk about today. Let's invite God's presence. Lord, we thank you that in your providence we're meeting in a synagogue to speak about these things. And we pray your presence. We pray blessing and protection over everyone who worships in this synagogue. All the families who are connected to this synagogue, we pray blessing on this place. And we ask you, Lord, to anoint this message in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to be looking at the end of Romans chapter 11. Let's read that together. We'll start in verse 25. I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written. The deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sin. As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake. But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who are at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Now it's easy for Gentile Christians to imagine that all of these anti-Semitic attacks and words must be done by people who aren't actually Christian. That people who have put their trust in Jesus, who believe in the Jewish Messiah, could not possibly find themselves, you know, making anti-Semitic statements, advocating anti-Semitic acts, that this must be folks who maybe they go to church, but they don't have any faith in the real Jesus. And tragically, if that's your view, that's mistaken. That some of the worst anti-Semitic comments, some of the worst anti-Semitic acts have been done by heroes in the church, people who we quote, people whose theology we follow, folks who have set the foundation for our Christian faith. And part of the problem is that these people read certain statements in the Bible that seem to have an anti-Jewish slant. And then they repeat those statements. They take them on board as if they could make those statements themselves. There are some very harsh statements spoken by Jesus himself against Jewish leaders and against Jewish people about Jewish resistance to the Messiah. And the Apostle Paul in this text says that unbelieving Jews are enemies of the gospel. The problem is when Gentile Christians read critiques of Jewish leaders or Jewish people in the Old and New Testament, these Gentiles think they can adopt these critiques and verbalize them themselves, and they forget that the critiques against Jews are spoken by Jewish people. That these are insider critiques within the covenant community. They forget who's making these statements. All the people who are making these statements are Jewish. Jesus was a Jew. Paul was Jewish. So was John the Apostle. So was Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Amos. And so all of these critiques are in-house critiques. They're insider battles about what does it mean to be a Jew? It's very different than those same words being spoken as an outsider. Insider critiques share a common identity. We are in this together. We are all family. It shares a common love. Family members who critique each other are still completely committed to the family. When Amos attacks Israelite leaders, or Paul indicts his fellow Jews in Romans 2 or Romans chapter 11, the critique is within the covenant community for the sake of the covenant community. Their arguments spring from love and from a broken heart. It's like a family exhorting one of their family members: hey, you're not living up to the standards of our family. You're not living up to what it means to be part of this family and to observe the family code. When we're listening to critique in the Bible, we're overhearing a family argument at Thanksgiving. It's one thing for somebody to criticize your, for you to criticize your family. It's quite another thing when somebody outside your family tries to say that about your mother or your father or your sister or your brother. Outsider critique doesn't say we should be better than we are. Outsider critique says, you are worse than us. Outsider critique comes with a sense of disdain and contempt for the other. They don't love the family. Their hearts don't bleed for the family. Their hearts are not broken. When Jesus critiqued Jerusalem, what he did first was he wept over it. He wept. He said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you've missed the time of your visitation. When Paul critiqued Israel, in Romans 9 to 11, he first said, I would rather go to hell if my Jewish brothers and sisters could only be saved. That's the heart that has the ability to critique. It's not a heart of contempt, heart of disdain. From people who have no investment in the well-being of the Jewish people. The problem is that when the church became largely Gentile in the second and third centuries, as the church spread outside the nation of Israel to the Gentile world, these words that we read that were spoken by Jews to other Jews were taken up in the mouth of Gentiles. The words didn't change, but the speakers did. And what was meant to be a prophetic indictment of one's own people became an outsider's verdict of condemnation. So when you read the words of Jesus or you read the words of Paul, you ought to be hearing, and you ought to remind yourself that you're hearing an insider family debate, not an outsider condemnation. And we understand this, don't we? I mean, it's, let's be frank here. You know, we hear black people saying certain things about other blacks and using certain words. It's very different. When somebody who's not black uses those same words or makes that same critique, it's a totally different thing, entirely. And uh as I said before, it's one thing for you to criticize your brother or sister. It's another thing for somebody who's not invested in that family relationship to say something about your family. Let me just give you a couple of examples, though, when the words were picked up by Gentiles, because these are heroes in the history of the church, not people who had no faith in Jesus the Jewish Messiah. There was a very famous preacher in the fourth century, John Chrysostom. He became the bishop of Constantinople, and uh Pastor John had a problem, and that is that many of his Christian congregants liked going to synagogues because they enjoyed the Jewish holidays. And they began to celebrate some of the Jewish holidays in their Christian homes. Well, this outraged him, it incited him, and so he preached eight messages called against the Jews. And what he said, let me read it to you. He's a hero in the church. He was sainted by the church. He said, the synagogue is worse than a brothel. It's a den of scoundrels, a temple of demons, the cavern of devils, a criminal assembly of the assassins of Christ. He said, I hate the Jews. And it is the duty of every Christian to hate the Jews. Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation, three years before he died, published a sixty-five thousand-word treatise titled On the Jews and Their Lies. And in this treatise, along with other things, he advocated the burning of Jewish synagogues, the destruction of Jewish businesses, the confiscation of all Jewish wealth, the burning of Jewish prayer books, the burning of Jewish the Jewish Talmud. He further advocated the expulsion of all the Jews of Europe from Europe, and he said that it is entirely excusable if Christians killed Jews. This is Martin Luther. His words were reprinted by the Nazis and distributed as the theological justification for what became known as Kristallnach, the night of broken glass, where Jewish synagogues all over Germany were burned to the ground and businesses were attacked, and thousands of Jews were imprisoned. So there is a long and dreadful history of Christian participation and advocacy for anti-Semitism. Let's look at the text. The text that we read just a few minutes ago from Romans chapter 11, 25 to 33, that text is kind of an odd one for many Christians, and many Christians don't understand why Paul is even raising all this stuff about Jews anyway in Romans 9 to 11. I mean, if you read the flow of the argument, and those of you who have been coming here to New Albany, you've heard the basic structure of Romans that is that Romans 5 and the end of Romans 8 form a sort of bookend in which the Apostle Paul is communicating we can have absolute assurance of salvation, that if we place our faith in Jesus, the Savior and the Jewish Messiah, if we place our faith in Jesus, we can be absolutely certain that on the day of judgment we will be saved. And he starts the argument in Romans 5 and he ends it with a high point in Romans chapter 8 that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Reach that high point, he does what looks to Christians like a sort of a detour. He starts talking about Jews. Why not just go immediately from Romans 8 to Romans 12? He's laid the theological foundation, and now he can move into Christian behavior, Christian ethics. Here's what you need to believe, Romans 1 to 8. Here's how you should behave, Romans 12 to 16. What's all this business about Jewish people? Is this just a theological hobby horse for Paul the Jew? Well, you know, I'm really interested in this, but you Gentiles, and you know, you can just kind of snooze through Romans 9 to 11, it's a parenthesis, and move on. That's not it at all. Listen. The congregation that made up the Roman church was a mix of Jews and Gentiles. And one of the pressing issues in a congregation containing Jews is well, what about the Jewish people? God made all these promises to the Jewish people throughout the Hebrew Bible, and yet the majority of Jews have not trusted in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. So here's the issue. You say, Paul, that if I place my faith in Jesus, I'm going to absolutely be saved. That's a promise of God, but God made promises to the Jewish people that don't seem to be fulfilled. If God wasn't faithful to the Jews, how do we know he's going to be faithful to us? If his promises have not been fulfilled in the life of Jewish people, how do you know they're going to be fulfilled in the life of Gentile believers? And Paul takes three arguments, three chapters rather, to argue that God is going to be faithful to the Jewish people, that his gifts and promises are irrevocable. He is going to be faithful to his people, the Jews, and he will be faithful to you, Gentiles, who put your faith in Jesus. God is a faithful God. Let's work the argument out. And so the Apostle Paul says this in Romans 11. I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters. So that you may not be conceited, Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And in that way, all Israel will be saved. He's talking about the faithfulness of God. All Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. So let me try to answer several questions that this text provokes. First of all, who is the all Israel that will be saved? Who is the all Israel that will be saved? And no less a notable than John Calvin said, all Israel is just the church. It's a church made up of Jews and Gentiles who trust in Jesus. It's not an ethnic designation. It's anyone who believes in Jesus is all Israel. There is one text in the New Testament that uses the term Israel to refer to the church, and that's found in Galatians chapter 6. So there is a text that Calvin could point to. However, there are 72 other texts in the New Testament in which Israel is always a designation for ethnic Jews. And Paul's whole argument in Romans 9 to 11 turns on the idea that Israel equals ethnic Jews. And this becomes indisputable beyond doubt when Paul quotes Isaiah 59 and he says that Jacob's sin will be removed, and so all Israel is saved. Jacob is never a synonym for the church. Paul is talking about ethnic Jews when he refers to all Israel will be saved. Okay? So here's the second question. When will Israel be saved? The Apostle Paul says this in verses 25 and 26. I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved. What he's saying is Israel will be saved consecutively and consequentially as a result of Gentiles being saved. First, Gentiles will be saved, a full number of Gentiles will come in, a full number of Gentiles will be grafted into the olive tree that is Israel, and then following that, all Israel will be saved. And there's been a temporary hardening of Israel, but one day that hardening will be lifted. So, when will all Israel be saved? Throughout history, or what Christians call church history, the last two thousand years, there's always been a remnant, according to the Apostle Paul and according to history, of Jewish people who have trusted in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. For example, there is a man named Rabbi Max Wurtheimer. Rabbi Max was a reformed Jew who went to Hebrew Union Seminary in Cincinnati and became a reform rabbi down in Dayton at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. He was a beloved rabbi in Dayton. And then one day, Rabbi Max, in reading Isaiah 53, had a revelation that Isaiah 53 was talking about Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. And Rabbi Max placed his faith in Jesus. He actually started a church. While he was the rabbi of a reformed synagogue, he was a pastor of a church. Well, this was too much for the Jewish community and too much for Hebrew Union Seminary. They removed Rabbi Max's name from the roles, but he's part of the remnant. Have you ever heard of Daniel Zion? Most people have never heard of Daniel Zion. He was the chief rabbi of Bulgaria during the Holocaust. And as a result of Rabbi Daniel Zion's efforts, hundreds of Jews were saved from going to extermination camps. Well, after the war, Rabbi Daniel Zion emigrated to Israel. And he was so well respected that he was invited to sit on the chief rabbinic court in Israel. Oh, one thing I didn't mention is Rabbi Daniel Zion believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and he had placed his faith in him. Well, when he was examined by the rabbinic court for his entrance onto that court, they said, You can be on this court, but keep your faith in Jesus to yourself. Keep it private, and you can sit on this court. Here's what Rabbi Daniel Zion said. He said, I would give up all earthly honors for the sake of my Messiah, my friend. The rabbinic court stripped him of his rabbinic title, but the Bulgarian Jews in Israel still regarded him as their rabbi. And every Shabbat, every Sabbath, Rabbi Daniel Zion, along with celebrating Sabbath services in the morning and in the evening, every Shabbat, he also held a Bible study in his home where he taught forcefully and fearlessly about Yeshua, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. Right now in the world, there's estimated to be several hundred thousand Jewish people who have placed their faith in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, including this Jew who is now speaking to you. There is coming a day, Paul says, when Jewish believers will no longer be a remnant, when they will no longer be just a trickle, but all Israel will be saved. I don't think Paul is saying every single Jewish person will be saved, but I do think he's saying that the mass of Jews will be saved. That Israel as a whole will be saved. There's going to be a great turning, a great revival before Jesus returns, of Jewish people placing their faith in Jesus. Why is it important? Why is it important that Israel be saved? I think it's important for you to understand this, Christian believers. Because there are three great signs that Jesus' return is about to happen, according to the Bible. Three great signs. Many Christians misunderstand what the signs are of Jesus' coming, but let me list them for you real quickly. The signs are not earthquakes or wars or rumors of war, as many popularly believe. Jesus says you're going to hear about wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes in various places. There are going to be all kinds of disturbances. He says, but the end is not yet. These are just, he says, the beginning of the birth pangs. They're just the beginning. But the baby's not yet ready to come. These are not yet signs. But then there are yet signs. And there are three yet signs that the baby is here. And the three yet signs, number one, is Jesus says in Matthew 24, that the gospel must be preached to all nations as a testimony. And then the end will come. Now I don't know when God, in his wisdom, will determine that the gospel has been preached to all nations. Lots of discussion about what does he mean by nations and are they sociolinguistic groups? So what is he talking about? But whatever that is, that has to happen, and then the end will come. That's the first sign. Gospel has to be preached. Here's the second sign: Antichrist must be revealed. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 know this, that day will not come until the man of lawlessness is revealed. That's the second sign. First, the gospel has to be preached to all nations, then the end will come. Second, Antichrist must be revealed. And here's the third sign: the salvation of all Israel. Paul says, I don't want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved as it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob, and this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. I think there's a sequence here. The full number of Gentiles will come in. Then all Israel will be saved. Then the deliverer will come to Zion. So, last question. How will Israel be saved? How will Israel be saved? And there are always two sides to the salvation of any individual. There is a human side. One person shares with another person about Jesus, they bear witness, and then people come to Jesus. There's a human side, there's a divine side. Let me go through these quickly. What is the human side? How do we relate to our Jewish friends, our Jewish neighbors, our Jewish employees and classmates and family members? How should we relate? The human side is this. First of all, the Apostle Paul says, love never fails. You know, so many folks think, I don't know what I would say to a Jewish person. I don't know how I would relate without being offensive. But here's the deal, friends. Whether you're talking to a Jewish person or a Muslim or an atheist or someone who's gay and you're going, like, I don't even know where to start, Paul gives us the best counsel ever in 1 Corinthians 13. He says, love never fails. Love never fails. Listen, when when I've had personal testimony to this. When I met Marlene as a freshman in college, the first week of our freshman year, Marlene was not an expert in Jewish evangelism. She hadn't read a bunch of Jewish apologetics. She didn't have all the right vocabulary. She could not say the blessing over the Shabbos candles. She didn't know any of that. She does now. What she did really well was she loved me. She cared about me. She showed me respect. She was a good friend. And she shared Jesus. Love never fails. You show somebody that you care about them. You show them that you care about their family. You show them that you care about what concerns them. You stand up for them. You stand up against anti-Semitism. You stand up against anti-Semitic comments. You stand up for your friends. Love never fails. Second, be informed. Be informed. It's incumbent upon Christians to know something. I had a guy at Vineyard Columbus come to me right after the Gaza attack and then Israel's counter. And he said, uh, why is the church not speaking out against Israel? So I said, What would you want the church to do? He said, Well, condemn Israel. So I said, Because they responded to an attack. I mean, America responded to Pearl Harbor, and we responded to 9-11. What what would you have us do? And and I said, you know, 1,300 Israelis were were murdered and and hundreds, uh, dozens of women were were raped. And he said, Oh, that's just Israeli propaganda. That never happened. Um and so I said, can I just ask you a question? Where do you get your news from? And he said, Al Jazeera. And I said, Al Jazeera, you know, Al Jazeera is uh an arm of the Qatari government. It's it's not objective news. And I and so I said, can I just ask you a qu uh question? I said, um, have you read a single book, one book, just one, about Israel from an Israeli perspective? And he was real honest. He said no. I said, okay, forget a book. Have you read an article, one article written about Israel from an Israeli perspective? He said, no. I said, do you have a single Jewish friend? He said, no. I said, well, you know what? It's really incumbent upon you as a Christian to like, just to be intellectually honest, to like read something or or know something, to get informed. Christians, I appeal to you to become informed about anti-Semitism and become informed about Israel. Visit a Holocaust museum when you're in Washington, D.C., or New York City, or LA, or Chicago. Travel to Israel. Read a book. Here's two books I would like to commend to your attention for those of you who are readers. First of all, a brief history of Israel. If you want one single book from an Israeli perspective, a brief history of Israel by Dan Gordas. Dan Gordas happens to be the grandson of my former rabbi in New York City. Rabbi was a great scholar. And his grandson wrote this history. Another one is Israel on Trial. It's written by a federal judge down in Florida. And it tackles some of the arguments regarding Jews, Israel is guilty of genocide, and Israel is an apartheid state and just sort of dismantles those arguments. Become informed. And the third thing that one must do is bear witness. Christian friends, the worst thing you could do because you are afraid to offend is not share your faith in Jesus with a Jewish person. Because the only way to salvation is faith in Jesus. The most anti-Semitic thing you can do is to hold back the gospel. Now, share sensitively, share wisely, share appropriately, but do not ever be afraid to share. Here's what Jesus the Messiah has done for me. Here's why I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here's why the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, here's how he's been faithful to me. Bear witness. That's the human side. The divine side, let me finish here, is found in verses 30 to 33. And what the Apostle Paul is saying throughout this whole chapter is God has used in his infinite wisdom and power all of this rebellion by Jews and by Gentiles. He's used all of that energy to actually save more people. What God does with Jewish rebellion and Gentile rebellion is it's like he's pulling back the string of a bow. And the farther back it goes, the farther the arrow is going to fly. What Paul is arguing in Romans 11 is God has performed a kind of divine Judo move. He takes all the energy of his opponents and he flips it around so that not only is rebellion overcome, but that Jews and Gentiles would be saved. And the end of all of this is that we would marvel at the wisdom of God and we would bow our knees saying, God, you are so great. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let's stand.