In Genesis 17:8, God promised Abram “the whole land of Canaan as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you.”
So it sounds like the nation of Israel will have to be restored back to the land of Canaan to fulfill that promise. And wasn’t that the hope and belief of Jesus’ disciples in Act 1:6 too, when they asked the resurrected Jesus: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Was this the time that the good old glory days of Israel in King David’s day would be brought back, and all those marvellous Old Testament prophecies about the thriving of Israel and the conquering of all its enemies would begin?
But Jesus wasn’t interested in the timing of anything, or in their national hopes, verse 7. He wanted his disciples’ attention focused on being his “witnesses,” and the power he would give them in the Holy Spirit to take the message about him to the world, verse 8.
And what would that message be? It was Peter who explained. At a massive gathering of Jews from far and wide he took them right back into their own scriptures, that this was the time Joel had spoken of, that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21).
The focus was now on Jesus being the source of salvation. Did that mean, therefore, that the restoration of Israel as a nation was no longer in God’s plan?
Peter, however, told his fellow Jews in Acts 3:25, that “you’re still heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. It’s just as God told Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed,’ so when God raised up his servant, Jesus, he sent him first to you to bless you,” verse 26.
So God was still honouring his promise to them as Abraham’s offspring, by sending Jesus with his message of salvation to bless them first. And how would they be blessed? By Jesus “turning each of you from your wicked ways” (26).
And those who responded would become “the Israel of God,” as Paul called the Church in Galatians 6:16. So this was how the new restored Israel would come to be; it would be in those who believed it was in Jesus that the blessing of all peoples promised to Abraham was now being fulfilled.
The Church, therefore, is simply the manifestation of that new restored Israel, as the promises to Abraham of the whole world being saved can be seen in lives being transformed all over the world by Jesus today.
To the next blog, then: “It all began with Abraham.”
Buck To Basics 