By D. B. Berg
The 21st verse of the 37th chapter of Ezekiel says: “Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land.” The church has often interpreted this as being the Jewish people and this land being the literal land of Israel. It’s true that in fulfillment of Bible prophecy, the Jews have been gathered out of all the world and every nation on the face of the earth to which they had been scattered and gathered back into the land of Israel, and they have proclaimed it again their own land, Israel, a Jewish homeland.
But who is this Israel, since Jesus’ coming as the Messiah and death on the cross for our redemption? God speaks about the spiritual Israel, the children of Abraham by faith, which He has told you through His Word and through the mouth of His apostles of the early church means you! Whether you be Jew or Gentile or Greek, it no longer makes any difference. There’s now no longer any Jew nor Gentile in Christ Jesus. No male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. We are all just one nation now, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Jesus Christ.1
What is our land? It’s the kingdom of God. Where is it? It’s in our hearts. “The kingdom of God,” Jesus Himself said, “cometh not with observation.” You can’t see it! He said, “For the kingdom of God is within you.”2
The woman at the well in the Gospel of John, chapter 4, began a religion argument. As soon as she found out Jesus was religious, like so many unbelievers she wanted to argue religion. And she herself was obviously what the world would call a sinner.3 But in the eyes of Jesus she was accepted and loved. He went way out of His way to make a lonely trip through her land of Samaria to meet her personally and alone at a well when she came in the heat of the day, the time when no other women came for water because it was too hot. Perhaps she came when no other women would be there because they would have criticized her or viewed her with contempt.
Jesus knew she was going to be there because He told His disciples before He left on the trip to hike that long way, many weary hot miles along the dusty roads of the Holy Land. He was in Judaea and going to Galilee, and every good Jew would have avoided Samaria which lay between like the plague, “because the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”4 They were considered a mongrel race, a mixture of Jews and Arabs who had a different place of worship, not at the temple on Mount Moriah but upon another mountain in Samaria that they claimed was the place to worship. The Samaritans were ostracized, banned and exiled by the Jews because they had mixed with the Gentiles, and were viewed with contempt and despised, as they considered them foreign and irreligious. But Jesus loved them!
One of the greatest stories Jesus ever told was about a Samaritan who had mercy and love upon a Jew—the story of the good Samaritan.5 He used this story to try to show the world “Who is my neighbor?” In so doing, Jesus was showing what it meant to love your neighbor and what His Law of Love truly meant when He said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself.”6
So while the Jews despised and avoided the Samaritans, Jesus loved them and He went out of His way to go the lonely road to Samaria to meet a lone woman by a well in the heat of the day when no one else went there, so they could have a conversation alone together. And right away she began to argue religion. She said, “You Jews say that Mount Moriah, the temple, is the place to worship. We say that here on Mount Gerizim is the place to worship.”
And Jesus said to her, “The time is coming and now is when ye shall worship God neither here upon this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but he that pleases God shall worship God in spirit and in truth”—in the Bible, His Word. “For God seeketh such to worship Him.”7 “He that worships God shall worship Him in spirit and in truth.” In other words, the physical temple meant nothing to God anymore.
Moses said that “without the shedding of blood, there shall be no remission of sins.”8 And yet the temple no longer exists—it is under a Muslim mosque now. They have no fire, no sacrificial worship, no shedding of blood. I asked a rabbi one day, “When Moses said that without the shedding of blood there’s no remission of sins, now that you no longer have sacrificial worship and the shedding of the blood of animals as a type of the cleansing of sin, how do you get forgiveness of your sins?” He replied, “Today we believe that our sacrifice is a sacrifice of prayer and worship.”
I thought to myself, “Isn’t that a pretty bloodless religion, when Moses said without the shedding of blood there’s no remission?”9 We believe that “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”10 He was the final sacrifice for sin. He was the ultimate Lamb of God slain for the remission of our sins. He took the punishment of our sins in His own body on that tree, the cross, and that was the last efficacious, legal, and authoritative religious sacrifice of blood for sin as far as God was concerned.
Not another sacrifice after the moment Jesus died on the cross was meaningful! Not another animal slain upon the altar before the temple for another almost 40 years after Jesus was killed meant anything to God. The final ultimate Lamb of God had been slain and shed His blood already as a sacrifice for you and me upon the cross of Calvary. There is no other sacrifice! All other sacrifices were merely a type and a foreshadowing, a prophecy of the coming sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His blood on the cross for our sins. Temple worship from that time on was in vain.
Jesus died on God’s altar, the cross, represented by every crucifix in the world, believed by every Christian, every son and daughter of God who trusts Jesus Christ for their salvation and His blood shed for their sins, observed every time we observe the sacrament of Communion, the Last Supper when we take the bread and the wine. The bread, representing His body broken for us, our healing. The wine representing His blood shed for our salvation. He said, “As oft as ye do it, ye do it in remembrance of me, and ye do show the Lord’s death till He comes.”11 It’s a testimony, a witness; it’s a sign that we believe.
So who is Israel today? It’s no longer the land or people of Israel. It is the believers in Jesus, who have Jesus in their hearts and are saved—they are Israel today! And you who believe are His Holy Land today. You are His kingdom, for the kingdom of God is within you. Praise God? Every Christian is a child of God, and you are the kingdom of God.
The natural land of Israel is merely a historical piece of property. The children of God have been driven out of every country on the face of this earth, persecuted all over the world, having no home here on this earth, pilgrims and strangers seeking for a city whose builder and maker is God.12—The Holy City come down from God out of heaven to dwell upon earth.13
We’ve already arrived! We’re already in the kingdom. We’ve got our land in our hearts spiritually—Jesus! We will be the sanctuary of God, His holy temple, and we already are. “You are the temple of the Holy Ghost.”14 You are the temple of God already! God doesn’t dwell in houses built with hands.15
So where is His sanctuary today? Where does He dwell today? In you and me and all His children saved by faith in Jesus! We’re His temple, His sanctuary, and wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, He’s in our midst.16 Hallelujah!
Originally published March 1981. Adapted and republished February 2020.https://anchor.tfionline.com/post/holy-land/
0 Comments:
Post a Comment