Lost and Found – The Lost Sheep of Israel
Lost and Found – The Lost Sheep of Israel.
“Then Jesus answered her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” (Matt. 15:24); “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16); “These twelve disciples Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” (Matthew 10:5-6); “When God raised up His Servant, He sent Him first to you, as heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” (Acts 3:26).
First Priority. The Father’s orders to Jesus were clear… Go to the Jewish people first, and don’t worry so much with the rest of the world for now. Believe me, Son, the Father implied, you’ll have your hands full with my lost sheep of Israel. Jesus’ mission in His earthly ministry was first to the people of the Promise, the nation that has had a covenant with God for over 2,000 years. The whole world, all the families of the earth, is to be blessed through the Jews and their Jewish Messiah, which God had proclaimed to Abraham so long ago (Gen. 22:8, 26:4, 28:14). God’s chosen people were to be the spiritual pipeline to the Gentiles, the ones to spread the Good News later, after Jesus has returned to the Father, after sending His Spirit down to continue His work on earth. Jesus’ Great Commission, His ultimate mission, was very clear in Matthew 28:19, “Go to all the nations.” But the Father is asking Jesus… For now, Son, start with the Jews, they have the privilege of first claim to my salvation plan. Everyone else will hear the Gospel in due time.
Gentiles Too! The Gentiles needn’t have worried, though, if they weren’t the first priority in Jesus’ ministry. The Hebrew Bible was very clear that God’s salvation through the Messiah would eventually be for all people, Jews and Gentiles. That old saint Simeon, who dedicated baby Jesus in the Temple, revealed what many Jews had forgotten… “Simeon took the baby Jesus up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; For my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel!” (Luke 2:32). That quote from Isaiah highlighted what that prophet recorded elsewhere in his inspired word to the people of Israel:
- “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles” ( 42:6) - “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (Is. 49:6) - “Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations.” ( 51:4).
The Parable of the Wedding Feast. In fact, Jesus happily included the salvation of the Gentiles in His story about the wedding feast, told to those religious leaders who thought salvation was limited to the people of Israel. In Matthew 22:1-14, a certain king arranged a marriage of his son, and as usual is throwing a big celebration for the occasion. So the king sent out some servants to distribute invitations to those of the king’s choosing. This first attempt was surprisingly unsuccessful. The king was not about to give up of course, so he sent some more servants out with invitations to another group of people. With this second round of invitations, he tried to convince the invitees to come by announcing that the dinner is prepared, complete with royal oxen and fatted cattle. These invitations once again fell on deaf ears, and the people rejected the king’s kind offer to celebrate with him in honor of his son’s wedding. To make matters worse, some of the invitees went so far as to kill some of the king’s servants. They mistreated and murdered them even though they represented the king. The king then sent out the servants for a third time, this time with instructions to go out to the highways on the edge of town, the busy intersections that were the city-country crossroads, and randomly invite anyone they could find who didn’t even know the king or his son, everyone they saw both good and bad. So the servants obeyed, and they succeeded in filling up the huge wedding hall with guests.
Officially Invited. Jesus in this story is accusing the Jews of rejecting the King’s repeated invitations to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is telling them that the Jews were invited first, and have continued to reject God’s invitations. Perhaps this is a reference to “the lost sheep of Israel.” It is widely accepted that the servants of the king who extended the first round of invitations represented Moses and the patriarchs and Torah. The Jews rejected them, so He sent a second round of invitations through the prophets and apostles. These servants were not only rejected but killed for their efforts. The third round finds the king inviting the sinners and the Gentiles, the people who were traveling on the main thoroughfares leading out of the city. These people viewed as outcasts by the Jews were finally included in the invitation list as well, and they eagerly accepted the king’s invitations. These were the people who eventually were included in God’s call to the kingdom, and they will be in attendance at the wedding feast. The feast in this story reminds us of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, when the Son, the Messiah, marries all His believers in the New Kingdom. The very people who were considered unworthy of heaven by the religious were graciously included by the King of heaven, even though they were not the first people called to attend.
“If you read what I have written, you will be able to understand my insight into this mystery concerning the Messiah. In past generations, it was not made known to mankind, as the Spirit is now revealing it to God’s holy apostles and prophets; This mystery is that through the Gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together with the Jews in God’s promise in the Messiah Jesus.” (Ephesians 3:4-6).
MYSTERY: a sacred secret hidden in the heart of God until the appointed time of revelation; a truth that can only be known by divine disclosure; spiritual insights into God’s way of thinking and planning; hidden truths revealed by God that are beyond human intellect and reason; divine knowledge that can only be understood through the Holy Spirit; God’s thoughts and plans revealed to believers and hidden to doubters and unbelievers.
“I do not want you to miss this mystery, brothers and sisters: an insensibility, a hardness, has temporarily befallen a part of Israel to last until the full number of the ingathering of the Gentiles has come in. And then all Israel will be saved… ‘This will be My covenant, My promise, says the Lord, with them, when I shall take away their sins.’ But from the point of view of God’s divine selection, they are still the beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable; He never withdraws them once they are given, and He does not change His mind about those to whom He gives His grace or to whom He sends His call.” (Romans 11:25, 27-29).
The Jews and the Gentiles. Paul is inspired in Romans 11:17-24 to provide for us a picture of God’s arrangement regarding the Chosen People of both the Old and New Covenants. The cultivated olive tree represents Israel, and the wild olive tree represents the Gentiles. The farmer tending the cultivated tree enables it to bear fruit by pruning and nurturing it carefully. He trims and discards the branches that are unproductive, and he keeps the roots of the tree intact. Out of tree’s holy root will come the Chosen One. The Gentiles have weak roots, because they are wild and uncultivated. The branches of this wild olive tree were thus incapable of bearing fruit. But then the farmer, out of sheer mercy, took an unproductive branch from the wild tree and grafted it onto the cultivated tree. This grafting would succeed in nourishing the wild branch, giving it new life and enabling it to bear fruit. This is a picture of how Gentile believers can now share in Israel’s blessings through its Messiah, who is the root of the cultivated olive tree. Paul says that the Gentile believers do not replace Israel, that they were grafted onto the Jews through Jesus. Israel remains God’s cultivated tree, His Chosen People even now, and through the Messiah is the source of salvation for all Gentile believers. Christians are branches growing from the Jewish tree, from the root of Christ. Both Israel and the Christian Church are a part of one cultivated olive tree and are given life through Jesus Messiah.
Various thoughts from St. Paul, who of course is a Messianic Jew called to be the apostle to the Gentiles, “who was given the privilege of announcing to the Gentiles the Good News of the Messiah’s unfathomable riches.” (Ephesians 3:8). The primary mystery of this aspect of the Gospel is explained well in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 2:13-16, “But now in Christ Jesus, you Gentiles who were once so far away, through the blood of Messiah have been brought near. For Christ is our shalom, our peace, our bond of unity and harmony. He has made us, both Jew and Gentile, one body, and has broken down and abolished the hostile dividing wall between us, by destroying in His own crucified flesh the division caused by the Torah with its decrees and ordinances; that He from the two might create in Himself one new body, one new quality of humanity out of the two, and so making peace. He designed to reconcile to God both Jew and Gentile, united in a single body by means of His Cross, thereby bringing the feud to an end.” (Ephesians 2:13-16).
The Jews: Lost and then Found. The following thoughts are from Paul’s Romans 11:
(1.) Jews and Gentiles alike are part of God’s chosen people through the Messiah Jesus. “By trusting in Jesus, Gentiles are equal partners with Jews in the body of Messiah and are made righteous through faith in Jesus Christ.” (The Complete Jewish Bible, translated by Dr. David Stern).
(2.) The Gospel of grace has grafted the Gentiles, (“branches from a wild olive tree“), onto Abraham’s tree, (“a cultivated olive tree“), through Messiah. Paul expands on this mystery in Romans 11:17-24.
(3.) Because of God’s grafting, Jew and Gentile have become equal sharers in the rich nourishment of the roots of Abraham’s tree. Gentile Christians should rightly be grateful for the Jewish roots of their Christian faith. In a real sense then, Christianity is a Jewish religion. As Bible translator Dr. Brian Simmons puts it, “Our Messiah is Jewish and the Scriptures we read were given to the beloved Jewish people. So we Christians feast on the New Covenant riches that have been handed down to us through the ‘olive tree’ of Judaism.”
(4.) Both Jewish and Gentile believers share equally in God’s inheritance by being called God’s children. As mutual partakers, they both enjoy the promise of God’s eternal blessings, because they are in union with Christ. “For in union with the Messiah Jesus, you are all children of God through your trusting faithfulness; because as many of you as were immersed into the Messiah have clothed yourselves with Him, in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor freeman, neither male nor female; for in union with the Messiah Jesus, you are all one. If you belong to Jesus, you are seed of Abraham and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:26-29).
(5.) God’s revelation concerning salvation was directed first to the Jews as His chosen people in the early Covenant.
(6.) Gentile believers are extensions of the Jews, God’s Chosen People. They are included, but they do not replace the Jews as the original people of God.
(7.) Jewish and Gentile believers are bound together in Christ, in anticipation of the restoration of Israel, when “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).
(8.) The restoration of Israel will include the blessing of all nations, and Israel will be a light to the whole world.
(9.) It is Messiah Jesus who gives significance to everything in the body, including Jew and Gentile, which is the basis of equality among the many varieties of believers.
(10.) Gentile believers remain Gentile, Jewish believers remain Jews, but there should be no division between them, since they are united in Christ.
(11.) To be included in the mystery of salvation, both Jew and Gentile alike must believe in Messiah Jesus. Their body of fellowship is made up of those who call on the name of Christ.
(12.) For the most part in Romans 11, the “you” is singular, which highlights that each of us is personally grafted onto the Olive tree.
(13.) Paul makes the point that the final target of the Torah has always been Messiah Jesus. The goal of the Law has always been aiming towards Christ.
(14.) Paul prophecies that Israel will endure a temporary stoniness, a hardness of heart, a veil over their eyes, until the Gentile world enters into its fullness. And this is the way that all Israel will be saved. The Gentiles will, with humility hopefully, attract the Jewish people to Jesus as the Messiah, to provoke them to a jealousy because of the witness of the Gentiles’ life and faith in Christ. This temporary rejection of Jesus by the Jews will actually bring salvation to the Gentiles, who in in turn will stimulate Jewish faith in Jesus as the Messiah. This will result in a greater outpouring of faith and the coming salvation of Israel.
The Promise. In the mystery of God’s timing and will, the Abrahamic Jews were the first ones found and destined to be blessed and a blessing to the rest of the world. But they became the lost sheep of Israel because their spiritual leaders led them astray. Many Jews were found again as they started following Jesus. The Gentiles then had their turn at the salvation story after Jesus Messiah died, rose from the dead and ascended back to the Father, and the Gentiles were then found by God. And sooner or later, this will lead to the lost sheep of Israel being finally and eternally found by the Good Shepherd Jesus. God had promised time and again that He would never, ever revoke His sacred covenant with His Chosen People. And God will eternally remain faithful to that Promise.