Blessing Abraham

In the Sunday sermon at Alex Southern Baptist Chapel, I made brief mention about how Jeremiah’s prophecy applied to us even though Israel was the original audience. I pointed out that in Isaiah 19, God foretold that He will consider both Egypt and Assyria as His blessed people as equals to the nation of Israel. Because God is not a national God, but the God of all people, many of the blessings, especially the ones that correlate with the advent of the Messiah in the Gospels, belong not only to Israel but also to Gentile believers as the whole world is grafted in as the people of God.

After the service someone approached me and asked what I thought about Israel, primarily the idea of univocally supporting Israel as a nation today.

There’s a hotbed question for you. In today’s political atmosphere, I can see why someone may be hesitant to answer such a question biblically. Depending on the group of people we are around, the temptation is either to shout, “Stand with Israel!” or demand justice in the Gaza strip. Everyone has his thoughts about Donal Trump, Hamas, the statehood of palestine, the right of Israel to govern their own historic lands, and whether or not those lands rightfully belong to Israel today. While there is the temptation to wear red to fit right in (a reference to an Imagine Dragons song, not a political party), now is not the time to dismount the fence based on the ideologies of the world around us. Now, just as always, we need to stand on the explicit words of Scripture.

What does it mean to bless Abraham?

You can find the story in Genesis 12

1 Now the Lord said to Abram, 

“Go forth from your country, 

And from your relatives 

And from your father’s house, 

To the land which I will show you; 

2 And I will make you a great nation, 

And I will bless you, 

And make your name great; 

And so ^cyou shall be a blessing; 

3 And I will bless those who bless you, 

And the one who curses you I will curse. 

And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” 

It is very important to read the Bible for what it is. We have a very unhealthy tendency in our day, mostly because of our hotbed political views, to extrue what the Bible says to support our own political agendas and ideas. Further, our views of end-times tend to color the way we read the Bible. Here are some things the Bible never claims:

1. All Christians must support the nation of Israel geo-politically.
2. The events of modern-day Israel have anything to do with Christ’s return.
3. Israel will be surrounded by enemies until Christ returns.

Before you get up in arms, I want to say that we can disagree on these things and still be friends and family in Christ. I am more than happy to dialogue with you about my claims here. Search the Scriptures. Send any of the prophecies that people use to justify their views about modern Israel to me, and I’ll be glad to show you how they were fulfilled leading up to Christ first coming rather than His second. If you can show me biblically that I am wrong, I will be happy to change my mind on the subject.

I do believe Israel is the chosen national people of God. I don’t believe God changes His mind about that. So, that much remains true for me. Israel is the national people of God. I’m not a replacement theologian. I don’t think Israel is replaced by the church as the national people of God.

What does it mean for me, a gentile, to bless Abraham? Does that mean univocally supporting everything Israel does, voting to send the nation money and military personnel? Does it mean speaking into the political environment? Does it mean standing against all of Israel’s enemies?

Consider God’s promise:

2 And I will make you a great nation, 

And I will bless you, 

And make your name great; 

And so ^cyou shall be a blessing; 

When God told Abraham He would make Abraham a great nation, He promised to bless Abraham and make Abraham’s name great so Abraham would in turn be a blessing.

Notice, this is about Abraham, not the modern-day nation of Israel. We can insinuate in the reading of the Old Testament that this promise carries on to Abraham’s descendants who would become the Old-Testament nation of Israel (which was mostly lost in a series of deportations from their land). This nation of Israel ceased to exist in 722 BC, when the Assyrians destroyed it. Ten whole tribes of Israel were completely lost to history. There were no more people referring to themselves as Israelites. Israelites were no longer recorded in history or in the Bible. By the time of Jesus, there were only two tribes remaining. They did not call themselves Israelites. They lived in Judea. They called themselves Jews. Between 586 BC and AD 1948, a Jewish nation did not even exist. The Jews were dispersed, ruled over, and the bloodline was tainted with gentile blood. We can claim that modern-day Israel is a true remnant, but there is really no way to prove that. Scripture certainly doesn’t tell us. So, we take another step away from the bible when we claim blessing Abraham means univocally supporting modern-day Israel. For the sake of continuity, I want to grant that modern-day Israel is a partaker of God’s blessing on Abraham.

I also notice why God blessed Abraham… So he could be a blessing. If we are going to apply Abraham’s blessing to Israel, we should be consistent. Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. He was not blessed so the world could prop him up. He was chosen and given much so he could be the servant, not the king, of the world. If the blessing of Abraham belongs to Israel, the same truth applies. Israel was not chosen and blessed to reign in the world but to serve the other nations–blessed to be a blessing.

But, the nation has spent so much time demanding support and always striving to reign. Rather than being the servant of nations like God assigned them, they have been using their blessings to put the nations under their feet–in the Old Testament and today. They’ve gotten very good at taking advantage of Christian nations and figureheads like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. This doesn’t excuse the other side, by the way, that lobbies in favor of terrorist organizations like Hamas in American streets. But, that’s a conversation for another time.

Israel was blessed to be a blessing.

God continued:

3 And I will bless those who bless you, 

And the one who curses you I will curse. 

And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” 

God will explicitly bless those who bless Abraham. If we grant Israel as the heir of this promise, then we believe God will bless those who bless Israel.

Our interpretation of the Bible really depends on what we think it means to bless someone. Does blessing someone mean univocal support of their actions? No. There are many people and groups who say it is. Biblically, it means looking out for someone’s wellfare. Blessing someone is not merely giving him something or supporting his actions. It is literally speaking life to him, practicing discipline, warning him, and seeking his good–not his pleasure.

To bless Abraham, or Israel, then, is to seek Israel’s good, not support every action. If we seek Israel’s good, God will also seek our good. In turn, Israel should be seeking the good of the other nations. We see how the whole world is built up!

If we curse Abraham, or Israel, seeking its destruction or refusing to speak life and discipline when necessary for Israel’s good, God will also seek our destruction. Unfortunately, Israel will also seek the destruction rather than the good of other nations.

This concept largely shifts our motivation when it comes to things like just war. It also helps us to see that God’s Law isn’t something that instigates war in and around Israel. Human pride does that. I wich people could step down off their high-horses long enough to see that seeking one-another’s mutual good is the most profitable course of action for every nation.

As we come closer to understanding this truth, all the families of the earth will be blessed. This promised is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is the prince of peace. Jesus calls all His people to be servants, not kings, in the world.

Yes. Israel is the chosen national people of God.

No. That doesn’t mean we should univocally support everything Israel does.

Yes. It does mean that we should seek Israel’s good and encourage Israel to be the blessing it was called to be in the world for the good of the whole world.

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