E08: The Future of Israel (Supplemental Session 4)

How should we understand Israel in light of Revelation and the end times? This episode presents a clear and cohesive view, helping you see how God’s promises and purposes come together across Scripture.

Transcript

Michael Berry: What is the future of ethnic Israel in God's plans? That is the topic of this session, and that's the question. What's the future of ethnic Israel in God's plans? How would you answer that? What is in store for the Israelites as a people group of God? And that's an important question even today as it comes to current situations in the Middle East. As I record this, there has been a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October 2025. But we all know that that could change tomorrow. And so this question actually plays a massive role in many political positions on Israel as a political state. And depending on how you might answer that question, you might find yourself on one side of the political aisle or another based on how you read the Bible. Because if God has a plan for ethnic Israel in the future, then how we interact with Israel today, our political position with Israel, can be seen as working with or against God in His purposes. And that's a big question that has big consequences. I don't think any of us would actively want to work against God and His purposes. But it's not just a big question today. In fact, it was one of the main questions during Jesus' ministry and as the apostles spread the word of His resurrection and teaching. What about Israel? Because the gospel Jesus preached is clearly fundamentally different than how the Israelites saw themselves through the Old Testament as the people of God. And notice, I want you to notice the distinction of what I just said there. The gospel Jesus preached is clearly fundamentally different than how the Israelites saw themselves through the Old Testament as the people of God. But it is not different than the message God repeatedly clarified throughout the Old Testament. And that is this. Those who belong to him who are his people are those who come to him in faith. Possibly one of the most popular scriptures that kind of point to this is Psalm 51. ⁓ it, this is David's Psalm that he writes after his affair with Bathsheba and then, course, ⁓ his subsequent murder of her husband. ⁓ But he says this, he says, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You would not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh, God, you will not despise. It's a place of having faith and trust in God. Isaiah 29 13 says, the people draw near with their mouth. but their hearts are far from me. Hosea 6.6, I desire steadfast love, not sacrifice. The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Habakkuk 2.4 says the righteous shall live by his faith. God has always been about hearts that approach him, not with laws and rituals, but with a faith that he alone can heal. And then the keeping of laws and rituals flow from that heart of faith. And it's really easy to flip that. We even do this today. We can get into the rut of thinking that our laws and our rituals, the things that we do that perform for God is what makes Him love us, but It's our faith, it's our coming to Him for healing, our coming to Him for sustenance, our coming to Him for provision. That is what faith is. And then the laws and rituals flow out of that as a result of our love for Him and our faith in Him. And Jesus' message reconfirms this truth. John 3.16, anyone? And Jesus' message is not only for Jews, but then is extended to Gentiles. And eventually we learn that those Gentiles don't have to be circumcised, don't have to come to the temple for sacrifices, and they can eat bacon. And so this is fundamentally different. And Jesus, in the Apostles' message, taught that God's people were no longer defined—and actually never were—based on bloodline and law adherence, but completely and only defined by faith in Jesus. And this is the kicker. And if you don't put your faith in Jesus, you are no longer considered part of the people of God. regardless of your bloodline and regardless of your law keeping. That's why Paul writes in Romans 9, 6, and this is in that section, chapters 9 through 11 that everybody skips. You go through chapter 8, then it gets odd in 9 through 11. It gets really complicated, so we just skip it and jump in back in 12. But in this section, this is all Paul is talking about here. He says, He says the future, he says this about the future of Israel, he writes, not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. In other words, not all who have the bloodline are part of the kingdom. And in that phrase alone, he reiterates the redefinition of what it means to be Israel, to be part of God's people. It is now the people who come to God by faith in Jesus Christ. And if you don't come to Him through Jesus Christ, you do not belong to God's people, to His new Israel. Friends, this is why the Jews wanted to kill Jesus. This is why Saul tried to kill Christians. before his conversion. This is why they killed Stephen in Acts chapter 8. This is why Paul was chased all over the Mediterranean by Jews trying to discredit his message and to capture him and kill him. It's not because he had a different view of God or merely believed Jesus was God's son. It was because he preached that God's people are now completely and totally defined by their faith in Jesus Christ alone, not bloodline, not adherence to God's laws. Therefore, in the dangerous part, God's plan does not include ethnic Israel unless ethnic Israel places their faith in Jesus, the crucified Messiah. And if you were Jewish and this was being spoken and taught that you were no longer part of the people of God unless you had faith in the guy that got killed by the Romans and is a failed Messiah, then you'd probably be ticked off enough to at least work against the teaching, if not in the teachers themselves. This is why Paul and Peter and John wrote to their churches in the New Testament and constantly reminded them of their teachings and to not be swept away by false teachers and adherence to laws or be caught up in genealogies or have to be circumcised or have to adhere to a strict diet. They wrote to encourage unity and oneness between Gentile and Jewish converts. Jewish leaders were following after the apostles city to city and teaching things contrary to the message of Jesus that salvation comes through faith and Him alone. And it's at this point that many Bible-believing, faithful people of God would ask, but if this is true, what about all the promises God made to ethnic Israel in the Old Testament? And that's a very valid question because there are a lot of promises that God made. some of the, mainly the big ones here, you know, he promised land to Abraham. He promised a nation that can't be numbered to Abraham. He promised a prophet like Moses to Moses. He promised blessings for keeping the law and curses for disobedience of the law to the people of Israel. He promised a king on the throne with a dynasty that endures forever to David. He promised a new covenant to Jeremiah and Jeremiah 31. He promises a new temple in Ezekiel 40 and on. And there are those that would say, God must fulfill these promises to Israel or he is not faithful to his word. And if he is not faithful in his promises to them, then how can we trust that he will be faithful in his promises to us? And so what the pivot is, is to come to the book of Revelation and look at it, and because it looks like God obviously hasn't fulfilled some of His promises yet, and so Revelation is seen by kind of closing the gap there. He'll be rapturing the church out of the world in chapter 4, then calling ethnic Israel to repentance and faith in Jesus and the events that follow. And at the end of the book, the prophecy of the new temple in Ezekiel 40 and onward, the promise of the land coming under Israel's control, the promise of a new covenant is then fulfilled by God to ethnic Israel in the millennium that we see later in the book. That's the oversimplified version, but I hope you get the point. Now, I completely understand the valid attempt to close some of those supposed gaps, but I believe the solution is actually far more simple. And as we should expect, the solution is Jesus. Every one of God's promises are fulfilled in Jesus and Jesus alone. If we look at the New Testament with the idea of fulfillment in our mind, this actually becomes glaringly obvious. In Galatians, chapter three, verse 16, Paul writes about a nation that can't be numbered, you know, the promise that God made to Abraham. And he says this, Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. And it does not say and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ. So the promise is that through Abraham, a nation that can't be numbered will come because of his offspring, meaning the line that leads to Christ. Then through Christ will Abraham receive a nation that can't be numbered. Jesus is the fulfillment. When God promised a prophet like Moses to Moses, we see this come to fulfillment in Jesus' life, of course, but in Acts chapter three, Peter is preaching in Solomon's portico and directly attaches Jesus as the one like Moses. And Hebrews three actually says Jesus is greater than Moses. Jesus fulfills the promise. He fulfills the promise that God made to David of having a dynastic king on his throne. Luke 1, 31 through 33, it says, behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and he will be called the son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father's David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. and of his kingdom there will be no end. There's a ton more to say about this kingdom that Jesus established as we go through Revelation, but there we see the promise of God to David is fulfilled in Jesus. The new covenant, of course, that is promised to Jeremiah, Jesus confirms this new covenant is now fulfilled in his blood at the Last Supper. Those words that are so popular at those communion meditations. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. He fulfills the promise. Promised blessings for keeping the law and curses for disobeying to the ⁓ general people of Israel. Matthew 5 17 says, do not think, and this is Jesus speaking, do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. So all throughout the New Testament we see fulfillment, fulfillment, fulfillment, fulfillment, and it's all in the form of Jesus. but that still leaves us with the land. The promise of land to Abraham must be fulfilled as well. And this is where all those policies decisions that are made in our world because this is where they come in because Israel is supposed to inherit the land of God's promise, the promised land of course, unless, unless, God's promise is fulfilled in Jesus. ⁓ wait, how is that supposed to work? God's promise being fulfilled in Jesus because of Jesus' perfect life, therefore Jesus inherits not only the promised land, but the entire earth. And that's just what Paul declares in Romans chapter 8 verse 16. He says that we are co-heirs with Christ. and an heir inherits all that is his father's. What is the father's? It is all of creation. And so I don't want us to be confused. God is not concerned about a strip of land in the Middle East. He is concerned about his entire created world. And because of Christ's perfection and his death on the cross, his resurrection, that earth is now Christ's as an inheritance, and we as co-heirs now inherit what is Christ's. and therefore the prophecy is fulfilled or the promise is fulfilled. And so what does all of this mean? It means that the fulfillment of all of God's promises are found in Jesus, which means the blessings of all of God's promises are found in Jesus, which means the definition of who the true Israel even is, is to be found in Jesus, which means the people who come to faith in Jesus are now found in Jesus, who is the true Israel, who has fulfilled all of God's promises and who is experiencing all of God's promised blessings and thereby including us in those blessings. Jesus is the fulfillment. Jesus is the blessing. Jesus is the true Israel and now all of Israel is defined by who is in Jesus. No matter what your blood has coursing through your veins, if you do not come to faith in Jesus Christ alone, you will not see the fulfillment of the promises of God. That is a pretty flagrant message. to be spouting in Israel. And that is why the Jewish people persecuted the church. And there's about a million more things we could say on this. I'd love to get into an exposition on Romans 9 through 11 where I believe Paul spells this out completely, where he talks about ⁓ the new Israel, the fulfilled Israel, ⁓ and it can get pretty complicated, but as you read through it, ⁓ as you read through it, because I'm sure some of you will go back to it and read through it, ⁓ you have to determine if he's speaking of ethnic Israel or a fulfilled spiritual Israel. And so we could go on and on and on about this. It would take an hour in and of itself. So I want to end with this verse from 1 Peter who writes this identity into his church and thereby into us today. And it's going to be key as we go through Revelation because we've already seen it once. We're going to see it a few more times. But Peter says this. But are a chosen race. You're a royal priesthood or a nation of kingdom and priests, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You once were not a people, but now you are God's people. once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Why? Because of your faith in Jesus, who fulfilled the promises of God, and who now is the true Israel. So we come back to the question at the beginning. What is the future of ethnic Israel and God's plans? And I think in light of everything I've said here, there is no plan for the future of ethnic Israel unless those within ethnic Israel become part of the new kingdom of spiritual Israel. And the only way to do that is to put their faith in Jesus Christ. And their opportunity to do that is now. And so I believe that Israel is a mission field. That they need Jesus just as much as an atheist needs Jesus, just as much as a Buddhist needs Jesus. Their opportunity for faith is now. And so the future of ethnic Israel is the same as those who have not placed their faith in Jesus. And so I believe that spells out for us a little bit of some policy, maybe even political policy ⁓ that maybe how we interact with Israel actually has no bearings on God's plans for the future. that the land that is being fought over maybe has no place as a single ⁓ focus in the world in God's plans for the future. Because once again, God's plans for the future are for all of His creation. And so I think what this does is free us to think about Israel differently and think about their dealings with the world differently and think about our dealings with them differently. both in the spiritual realm and in the physical realm. And so I'm just going to leave that there for you to ponder and to kick around as you hopefully are kind of shifting maybe some viewpoints of how Israel functions in the story of God both now and in the future. And so with that, I'll close this session and just encourage you to continue to put your faith in Jesus alone and nothing else. That is our truth. That is our hope. That is our future.