WHAT THE JUST JUDGE DOES WITH THE WORST OF JACOB
Here we are. A week or so has passed since a U.S.-encouraged, Egypt-brokered ceasefire brought silence to the skies over Gaza and Israel, and bomb shelters throughout the latter have emptied out for the much-preferred alternative of fresh air and freedom. I wish we could say that’s the end, though everyone on the ground here knows it’s just a waiting game until Hamas restocks, until Hezbollah lights a riot, until Iran achieves their end. We all know the terrorist parties in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria are just the ankle-biting dogs to aggravate Israel until the IRGC launches their long-dreamt assault. We all know that. And I wish we could say that’s it, that’s the story.
Of course, we cannot. Of course, there’s more. And unfortunately, of course the latest Israeli-Palestinian incursion exposed the latent spirit of antisemitism clutching the West by the throat. Attacks against Jews have risen 483% in the UK alone[1]—a country already no stranger to such violence. Yet for a generation getting their geopolitical news from a family of supermodels, who can be surprised? Jewish families who fled antisemitism in France—all too familiar with the possibilities when antisemitism gets entangled with European efficiency—are shaking their heads in Manhattan, lamenting, “This is what we left Paris for.”[2] And of course, once again, “I’m not an antisemite! I’m just an anti-Zionist!” has been exposed for what it is. Yet again we must ask ourselves what Dalton Thomas asked in Covenant and Controversy I: The Great Rage: “Auschwitz was possible without the provocation of a contentious Jewish nation-state. What’s possible with one?”[3]
We’ve seen glimpses of the answers to this question just within the last week, and they are horrifying.
Thomas expounds:
“The Nazis didn’t have grounds of justice to appeal to the population on. They had to make them up. And they did. But what if the Nazis actually had a State, policies that they could point to and say ‘This is wrong and it must be opposed in the name of truth and justice.’ Because the Third Reich just made it up. But today, you don’t need to make it up. All you need to do is reframe it, provide a different context for it. Omit certain truths and realities—and then make things up. And so, today, there’s a much more ripe context, a much more conducive context for a resurgence of antisemitism than there was in the days of Hitler.”[4]
It’s a depressing reality. For reasons that cannot be explained by human rationale, the State of Israel is held to standards no other nation is held to; nothing makes this clearer than the song and dance show known as the UN Human Rights Watch kangaroo court.[5] But let’s take things a step further and say this: even if all the worst accusations against the State of Israel were true—apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, governmentally-sanctioned racism, etc.,—the provisions and promises bound up in the Everlasting Covenant still stand. These accusations are not true, but even if they were, the Covenant of the LORD stands. The UN is of course unfazed by this; we cannot expect folks who scorn the Scriptures to care. Yet for the believing Body worldwide, why does this matter, what does this mean, and how do we keep from becoming “those” evangelicals?
Before I proceed, I need to define what I mean by “‘those’ evangelicals.” I mean the biblically illiterate ones who are so “committed to Israel” that they can neither meaningfully engage a heartfelt, sincere conversation about the modern condition of Israel, nor explain to a modern Jew or Israeli why they support them without sounding like “Well, you see, you guys being back in the Land means Gog and Magog is about to happen which means I get to get raptured out of here while y’all get slaughtered BYEEEEE…..” (I’ll address these issues in the next article.)
For now, let us deal with the issues of accusation and guilt. Let us pretend, even just for a moment, that the historically uneducated accusations of “apartheid” against the Israeli state could hold their weight in water—just for a moment. What does that degree of guilt and violation of the Sinai Law[6] mean for the “People of the Covenant”?[7]
In “Rockets, Giants, and Booze (How to Not Get Drunk on Jerusalem),”[8] I referred to two ditches along the narrow road of truth related to the eternal purposes of God as they’re bound up in the Everlasting Covenant. One ditch runs with the mud of delusion that’ll lead you to something like the evangelical thought train I referred to a moment ago, which (in a weird way) relies so heavily on the Covenant that it makes it irrelevant. But the other will impose new conditions to the Covenant as if Genesis 15 includes some fine print no one else has ever been able to see. Abraham definitely didn’t know about it. Paul didn’t either. What they did know, however, is what gives me this confidence: Even if the worst accusations against Israel were true (and they’re not), the Everlasting Covenant still holds. It still stands. Why?
It is not contingent on Israel.
It is not contingent on Moses. It is not contingent on Jacob. It is not contingent on Isaac. It is not contingent on Abraham. It is not contingent on David. It is contingent on the only One who was cognizant to walk down the aisle that fateful day under the oak trees of Mamre on the hills of Hebron:[9]
The I AM WHO I AM.[10]
Let’s suppose, for a moment, the Judge of the ages, Whose throne is established on righteousness and justice,[11] Who sees and hears everything[12] and will lay everything bare when He comes on the clouds in power and glory[13] entertained the prosecutorial case of the Hadids, the UN, the “They control the media! They control the money! They control everything!” conspiratorial crowd and the “God doesn’t care about real estate, they blew it” theological crowd against Israel. And let’s suppose, for a moment, that He listened to them as they rattled off their evidence for apartheid, for genocide, for ethnic cleansing, for their gleeful slaughter of Palestinian children (again, I’ve lived in the Middle East for a decade and none of these accusations hold up), for “killing Jesus.”[14] What would He say? What does the Scripture say about accusations against the children, nation, and Land of Israel?
“The LORD rebuke you, Satan!”[15]
Pretty strong language. Let’s examine it.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?”
Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel.
Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him He said, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.”
And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.”
So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by.
Then the Angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘If you will walk in My ways,
And if you will keep My command,
Then you shall also judge My house,
And likewise have charge of My courts;
I will give you places to walk
Among these who stand here.
‘Hear, O Joshua, the high priest,
You and your companions who sit before you,
For they are a wondrous sign;
For behold, I am bringing forth My Servant the BRANCH.
For behold, the stone
That I have laid before Joshua:
Upon the stone are seven eyes.
Behold, I will engrave its inscription,’
Says the Lord of hosts,
‘And I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
In that day,’ says the Lord of hosts,
‘Everyone will invite his neighbor
Under his vine and under his fig tree.’ ”[16]
The high priest represents the nation of Israel before the presence of the LORD. It matters that he’s filthy—not only indicative of his own guilt, but all of Israel’s. And the “accuser of the brethren, that great snake of old,”[17] is standing at the prosecution table to present his case before the Judge of the Ages: Israel, on the whole, is filthy. Every single Jew* has sinned. Every single Jew has fallen short of the everlasting righteousness—the glory of God—required to steward the covenantal provisions (important note: so have we[18]). Hear the accuser’s case: “Just One! Every Jew is filthy. Every Jew is guilty. You know what the Law demands.” But before he can open his mouth, the LORD rebukes him. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob rebuked the accuser before a case could be made against Israel, and then gave Israel white robes: righteousness. This vision, experienced by the prophet Zechariah, concludes with this incredible promise: “One day, I’m going to do this for real—in that Day.”
What Day?
The Day the sky “rolls back like a scroll,”[19] when the “sun, moon, and stars are ashamed” because the presence of the LORD out-glows them all.[20] When the nation of Israel is “born again”[21] “in a Day,”[22] when all her iniquity is removed in one day.[23] When Death once again passes over the people of Moses—when this time, they see the Lamb who covers them.[24] Until that day, this is what the stars serve to speak in the sky:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for a light by day,
The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night,
Who disturbs the sea,
And its waves roar
(The Lord of hosts is His name):
“If those ordinances depart
From before Me, says the Lord,
Then the seed of Israel shall also cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
Thus says the Lord:
“If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
[then] I will also cast off all the seed of Israel
For all that they have done,” says the Lord.[25]
Remember that nice, warm and fuzzy verse, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you a hope and a future”?[26] This is the “hope and future” He was talking about: the national salvation and regeneration of the people and nation of Israel and restoration of the Kingdom on the soil of Israel.[27] And when you start to wonder if He’ll finish what He starts, walk outside like Abraham did,[28] and look up. Look at the stars, and count them if you can. If the One who spoke them into being[29] and calls them forth every evening[30] somehow loses sovereignty over them, if the stars somehow throw and win a mutiny, then you can bring your accusations against Israel to Him. And if you can answer the questions posed to Job in the whirlwind,[31] then He’ll hold all Israel’s filth against them.
But you can’t count the stars, can you?
You can’t measure heaven above, can you?
Do you even know where to find the foundations of the earth?
May we, like Job, put our hand to our mouths,[32] lest we be rebuked with the criminal serpent. The God of Heaven and Earth,[33] the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob[34] is strategically pursuing divinely-ordained and sovereignly led eternal purposes that will result in a world reconciled brought further—into resurrection.[34] Every nation on earth will be blessed by God’s promises to Abraham coming to pass.[35] No Gentile can imagine the weight and burden required to carry the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises, of whom are the fathers, and from whom (according to the flesh), Jesus came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. “Amen.”[36] It is no wonder Fiddler on the Roof’s patriarch Tevye looked to the skies and asked, “Once in a while, couldn’t You choose someone else?” Do you know what it costs to carry the revelation of God to the world in Exile?
But He is not shaken by Israel’s sin, not swayed by Gomer’s infidelities. He cares—He really cares—but He saw this coming all along. He knew what He was getting into. Perhaps no Scriptures give us the kind of intimate insight into these mysteries as the lives of Hosea and Gomer; imagine the Word of the LORD first coming to you with deep, sleep-stealing conviction: “Go marry a woman who sleeps around town, and will continue to, and kinda likes it, and be faithful to her. And when she has kids who don’t look anything like you, you’re going to name them and raise them and father them. And then you’ll start to get a glimpse of what this whole thing is like for Me.”[37] What a uniquely gorgeous and exhausting assignment.
All of this, of course, comes to pass. Hosea is almost certainly brought to the end of himself. And right when he would want out, want permission to walk through Moses’ divorce loophole,[38] the Voice speaks to him again:
“Go again.”[39]
And here is the point:
Therefore, behold,
I will hedge up your way with thorns,
And wall her in,
So that she cannot find her paths.
She will chase her lovers,
But not overtake them;
Yes, she will seek them, but not find them.
Then she will say,
‘I will go and return to my first husband,
For then it was better for me than now.’
For she did not know
That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil,
And multiplied her silver and gold—
Which they prepared for Baal.[40]
“I will stage and strategize and orchestrate and sovereignly ordain and decree and Genesis 50:20 redeem until I wall you in, hound you down, and find you out. Grace and mercy never left the trail.”[41] And then:
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Will bring her into the wilderness,
And speak comfort to her.
I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope;
She shall sing there,
As in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.”[42]
The Valley of Achor is a place of Israel’s deepest shame and trauma—indeed, her first as a nation.[43]
“And it shall be, in that day,”
Says the Lord,
“That you will call Me ‘My Husband,’
And no longer call Me ‘My Master,’
For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,
And they shall be remembered by their name no more.
In that day I will make a covenant for them
With the beasts of the field,
With the birds of the air,
And with the creeping things of the ground.
Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth,
To make them lie down safely.
“I will betroth you to Me forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me
In righteousness and justice,
In lovingkindness and mercy;
I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness,
And you shall know the Lord.
“It shall come to pass in that day
That I will answer,” says the Lord;
“I will answer the heavens,
And they shall answer the earth.
The earth shall answer
With grain,
With new wine,
And with oil;
They shall answer Jezreel.
Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth,
And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy;
Then I will say to those who were not My people,
‘You are My people!’
And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’”[44]
This kind of covenantal security does and did not come cheap; indeed, this is what Jesus purchased on the splintered wood at the Place of the Skull.[45] It is by the Cross that God can remain both just and yet justify the guilty: through the blood of the Lamb applied not to doorposts, but to our dirty souls and filthy rags.[46] We love these truths for ourselves—indeed, we sing them every Sunday morning, “rejoicing,” as Hudson Taylor so succinctly said, “in [our] own security.”[47] Yet we stand clean before the Father, free from accusation and condemnation,[48] because we are grafted into[49] the covenantal tree planted in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—who himself fathered twelve sons who became twelve tribes, twelve branches. Out of these patriarchs grew the apostles, the prophets.
Let the children of the devil[50] spew his venom, speak his accusations. We will not engage. The Bride of Jesus will cling to the Cross that held the body “broken for [us],”[51] and declare the “better word.”[52] The only thing Jacob will hear from us is this:
He has not forgotten you. Your story isn’t over yet. And we are with you till the end, come hell or high water.
MEDITATE ON THE GOD WHO ‘GOES AGAIN’
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
*I’m mindful the historical marker here would more accurately be “Israelite,” as the term “Jew” emerged later. But I want you to feel this in today’s time.
[1] Harpin, Lee. “483 percent increase in antisemitic attacks, with most relating to Israel-Gaza.” Jewish News, 18 May 2021. https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/438-percent-increase-in-antisemitic-incidents-with-most-relating-to-israel-gaza/
[2] https://twitter.com/avitalrachel/status/1397219259588165633?s=20
[3] Watch the film for free here and read the fully cited transcript here.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Al Jazeera. “Israel most condemned by UN in 2020—three times more than other countries: The UN adopted 17 resolutions against Israel this year, compared with six for the rest of the world.” 24 December 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/24/un-condemns-israel-most-in-2020-almost-three-times-rest-of-world
[6] The Law given at Sinai includes provisions and guarantors for the poor and the sojourners. Jesus was referencing one of these tenets, for example, when He said “the poor you’ll have with you always.” (See Deuteronomy 15:11; Matthew 26:11)
[7] Romans 9:4
[8] Quick, Stephanie. “Rockets, Giants, and Booze (How to Not Get Drunk on Jerusalem.” FAI PUBLISHING, 13 May 2021. https://www.faipublishing.org/articles/rockets-giants-booze-jerusalem
[9] Genesis 12:1-9; 13:18; 15:1-21
[10] Exodus 3:14
[11] Psalm 89:14
[12] Hebrews 4:13
[13] Daniel 7:13-14; Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26; 1 Corinthians 4:5
[14] While both Jews and Gentiles were involved in the execution of the Son of Man, Jesus tells us clearly in John 10:18 that He laid His life down of His own free will. He chose to. Nobody had the power to take His holy life from Him. In the meantime, stupid signs like this are still being carried down public streets: https://twitter.com/supergutman/status/1396181116231561222?s=20
[15] Zechariah 3:2
[16] Zechariah 3:1-10
[17] Revelation 12:9-10
[18] Romans 3:1-31
[19] Isaiah 34:4; Revelation 6:14
[20] Isaiah 24:21-23; Revelation 22:5
[21] John 3:3-8
[22] Isaiah 66:7-11
[23] Zechariah 3:9
[24] Zechariah 12:10; John 1:29. See also “When Death Did Not Pass Over” by Stephanie Quick: https://www.faipublishing.org/articles/when-death-did-not-pass-over
[25] Jeremiah 31:35-37
[26] Jeremiah 29:11
[27] This is why these issues are knit together with the Great Commission (see Acts 1:6-8; Romans 11:11-15).
[28] Genesis 15:5
[29] Genesis 1:1-5, 14-18
[30] Psalm 113:6; 136:5-9; 147:4
[31] See Job 38:1-42:17
[32] Job 40:4
[33] Joshua 2:11; Isaiah 37:16; 66:1; Acts 7:49
[34] Romans 11:11-15
[35] Genesis 12:3
[36] Romans 9:4-5
[37] Hosea 1:2
[38] See Deuteronomy 24; Mark 10:3-9
[39] Hosea 3:1
[40] Hosea 2:6-8
[41] Psalm 23:6
[42] Hosea 2:14-15
[43] Review the story in Joshua 7
[44] Hosea 2:16-23
[45] Hebrews 13:20
[46] Isaiah 64:6
[47] Taylor wrote these words as he recounted the evening he committed to form the China Inland Mission; see his autobiography, A Retrospect, available from FAI PUBLISHING, and The Frontier from FAI STUDIOS.
[48] Romans 8:1
[49] Romans 11:17-24; Ephesians 2:11-13
[50] John 8:42-47; Ephesians 2:1-3
[51] Matthew 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:14–23
[52] Hebrews 12:24
