Questions, Clarification and Contending
OR What’s in a Name?
Romans 5:1-2;
Genesis 32:26-29; Galatians 3:6 ff; Galatians 6:16
I got a triplet of questions or comments/observations last
week that came together in a perfect storm. Tonight is going to be questions, clarification and
contending. Yesterday I recorded
the next installment in the Jude classes developing Jude 3 and the command that
we are to contend for the faith.
The word for contending means to strive, work hard or vigorously,
bringing in the idea of discipline and intensity. It is a word that is typically used of an athlete preparing
for an athletic contest and then all his effort he puts into winning the contest.
We contend for the faith a couple of different ways. One way we contend is within our own
soul because the sin nature always wants to distract us and pull us off into
some area of false teaching, sin or carnality. On the other hand, we always have to fight the attacks that
come from others either from inside the church or outside the church, the
cosmic system. When that happens,
then we are to contend for the faith.
The faith meaning a term that relates to the body of doctrine that is
foundational to Christianity.
Last time as we went through our study of Romans 5:1-2, we
focused on the fact that now as justified believers by faith, we have peace
with God. These questions that
came up while they may appear to be somewhat distracting or go in a little
different direction, they really are important because they ultimately relate
to what Paul has said in Romans 4:13-25.
As we shift into a new direction in chapter 5, I want to take this one
last time to pull some of these threads together to be sure there is no
confusion or questions left unanswered.
(But there always will be though – that is just the way we are.)
Romans 4:13 “For the promise that he would be the heir of
the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the
righteousness of faith.” The focal
point here is on the promise to Abraham.
In terms of the Abrahamic Covenant, that was
not a promise of eternal life.
That is the promise that he would be the “heir of the world” - in terms
of the fact that Abraham through his seed would bless all of the Gentile
nations, and all the world would be blessed through Abraham. This idea of promise is connected in
verses 13 ff to inheritance which focuses us to a future reality. Abraham did not inherit the land and
did not realize the promises that were made to him by God in the Abrahamic Covenant.
In other studies that I have had, there were at least 12
different promises that God made to Abraham in the Abrahamic
Covenant. They included that God
would develop a great nation from Abraham and that God would give Abraham (not
just his descendants) a specific piece of real estate in the Middle East which
he never personally had. He was still
a sojourner, a traveler basically living out of a mobile home (a tent). The only piece of real estate he owned
was the burial ground where he and Sarah were buried. God promised that Abraham was to be blessed in his own
lifetime, which he was. God also
promised that He would make Abraham’s name great. We saw just a hint of that in Abraham’s lifetime.
God promised a blessing upon those who would bless Abraham
and his descendants in Genesis 12:3.
He announced a harsh, divine judgment on those who treated Abraham and
his seed or his descendants with disrespect. That is so important to bring out that God said, “I will
bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” In English we use the same word to
translate two different words in the Hebrew. The first word in the Hebrew related to God’s judgment is a
term for a harsh judgment – the same word that is used in Genesis 3
related to the curse of sin.
But “those who curse you” is a different word that means to
treat you with disrespect, which is a light sense. If they do not take Abraham and his descendants seriously or
if they treat them frivolously (not in the sense of harsh Nazi-type
anti-Semitism but just with disrespect), God says, “I will judge you
harshly.” If God says He is going
to judge harshly those who treat Israel with disrespect, how do you think God
is going to judge those who are seriously anti-Semitic in a harsh, overt way.
In Abraham, all nations would be blessed. Not that national
distinctions are wiped out, but through Abraham all nations, all the
Gentiles would be blessed. God
promised that Sarah would have a son and that was fulfilled in his
lifetime. There was going to be an
Egyptian bondage. His descendants
would be taken out of the land God promised for 450 years, and then they would
return. Other nations would come
from Abraham aside from the promised seed. This is fulfilled in various Arabic nations. Ultimately, these intermarried, so
today you cannot really identify all those different groups – the
distinctions between the Midianites, Ishmaelites, and the Edomites.
God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. That is important in light of what we
are going to study tonight. The
way in which the ancient world looked at a name was that it identified
something about the character of the person. The one who changes a person’s name is the one who is in
authority. We see this again in
the changing of Jacob’s name by God to Israel. God also changed Sarai’s name to
Sarah.
All these 12 provisions are part of God’s promise to Abraham
which was stated 20 times. It is
restated 6-7 times just within the Abrahamic stories
from Genesis 12-23 and then reiterated to Isaac, Jacob and Joseph 20
times. It is for us to get the
point that God is serious about this promise that He is giving to Abraham that
He is going to give him a seed, and through that seed, there will be worldwide
blessing of all the nations. God
was going to give them a specific, literal piece of real estate.
As the history of Israel developed, and God entered into a
temporary or conditional covenant, called the Mosaic Covenant or the covenant
at Sinai, there was a further division or distinction that was made in terms of
the worship of God between Jews and Gentiles. Paul talks about this as the dividing wall between Jew and
Gentile in Ephesians 2. Last time
I was focusing on this concept of peace and how it is also developed in other
of Paul’s writings. In Ephesians
2:11-22, Paul talks about the peace that comes, the reconciliation that Christ
accomplishes on the cross that destroys the barrier between Jew and Gentile,
but primarily the barrier between God and mankind.
We see that historically there developed this enmity not
just between man and God, but there was this enmity or hostility between Jew
and Gentile. Gentiles were
demeaned as “uncircumcised.” This
was the typical way in which they talked about the Gentiles – they were
the uncircumcised, and the Jews were the circumcised. Gentiles were thus separated from a Messianic hope. They did not have the promise of the
Messiah. The promise was given to
Israel, but it is through the Messiah that the Gentiles would be blessed. But they do not know that; that is not
revealed specifically to them.
They were alienated from citizenship in Israel, which was a position of
temporal blessing and blessing within the covenant.
Gentiles were not party to all the covenants, including the
New Covenant. The Jewish covenants
were given to Israel and were between God and the house of Israel and the house
of Judah. There were three Gentile
covenants: the Creation or Edenic Covenant in the
Garden of Eden, the Adamic Covenant which is a
revision of that initial covenant in Genesis 3, and the Noahic
Covenant in Genesis 9. The Abrahamic Covenant is further developed in terms of three
unconditional or eternal covenants: the Real Estate Covenant, the Davidic
Covenant, and the New Covenant.
Also in Ephesians 2, Paul points out the Gentiles were
without hope. That is, they had no
promise of salvation, a Savior to them - it was through the Jews. And the Gentiles were godless.
In Galatians 3:26-29, as Paul develops this, he is showing
this distinction between Jew and Gentile that was part of the Law was
completely obliterated in the church age because we are in Christ. That is just in the church age that he
says there is no Jew or Greek.
That does not mean the physical, actual reality of being an ethnic Jew
or a Gentile was eradicated. Jews
were still Jews and Gentiles were still Gentiles, just like men were still men,
women were still women, slaves were still slaves, and the free were still
free. Galatians 3:28 “There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male
nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He does not mean that everybody who becomes a Christian is
asexual and that maleness and femaleness are somehow eradicated. Or that the way to emancipation as a
physical slave was through becoming a Christian. When he writes his letter to Philemon about receiving back
the slave Onesimus, he cannot order Philemon to
release or manumit Onesimus. He cannot do it because that is in the
physical realm.
This is talking about the fact that in the Old Testament
under the Mosaic Law, there were distinctions made that only free male Jews had
access to the inner areas of the temple.
The women were restricted to the Courtyard of the Women and the Gentiles
to the Courtyard of the Gentiles, but now in Christ, all have equal access to
God. These distinctions from the
Mosaic Law are completely obliterated in terms of our personal worship, our
personal relationship with God.
There was enmity between Gentile and Jew because of the Law,
but also enmity between all human beings (Gentiles and Jews) and God. The work of Christ on the cross meant
that that enmity is changed to peace, and so the issue is no longer sin but
whether we accept the death of Christ on the cross. The result is there is now this unity in Christ, and we are
being built together in the body of Christ.
Last time when I went through the Galatians 3 passage and
read some of the broader context, I had a question that came to me related to
understanding this relationship of Gentiles to Abraham’s faith. In what sense are the Gentiles or
church age believers descendants of Abraham spiritually? This also goes back to what we studied
in Romans 4:17-18 where Paul states, quoting God speaking to Abraham when He
changed his name, “(As it is written, ‘I have made you a father of many nations’)
in the presence of Him whom he believed – God, who gives life to the dead
and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who [Abraham],
contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many
nations [physically]…”
God had promised him that. That was one of the provisions of the Abrahamic
Covenant that he would become the physical father of many nations. But it also goes on to state that he
will become the spiritual father of those who follow him in faith (Galatians
3).
Here is the first of three questions that I was asked: Can you please clarify the concept of
the spiritual seed of Abraham? Now
let me give you the short answer.
The physical seed of Abraham is the seed that goes through Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. That is Israel
and refers to the descendants, and only the descendants, physically of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. The spiritual
seed, which is the focus of Gal. 3, is only mentioned as the seed of Abraham
and not of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
You cannot call the church or Gentiles saved in the church age spiritual
Israel. Israel is always a term
used of the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In Galatians 3, it is only talking
about those who are the spiritual seed of Abraham in that they are of the faith
and not of those who are emphasizing circumcision as a path to
either salvation or spirituality, justification or sanctification.
The second question which I have condensed a little
bit: What does it mean to be the
“Israel of God?” In Galatians
6:16, Paul says “And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be
upon them, and upon the Israel of God.”
What does that term “Israel of God” mean? The claim that is made is that this shows that the church
age believers are really the true Israel and that we are the Israel of
God. That is false. I will show you why when we get there.
The third question is:
How can someone who is anti-Zionist be anti-Semitic since many Jews are
anti-Zionist? You may not realize
that, but there are many Jews who do not support a modern state of Israel. The
ultra-Orthodox still do not believe that there should be a Jewish nation until
the Messiah comes. They are called
the Haradim, a term that refers to all
of the ultra-Orthodox group – the Hasidic, the Lubavitchers,
and a number of other groups. They
do not serve in the IDF in Israel, and this is becoming a real
controversial issue now in Israel.
They live off of welfare in many cases, but they won’t serve in the IDF or
the army.
I was reading an article in this month’s Commentary Magazine,
which is a publication that deals with a lot of political issues but primarily
Jewish issues. The article has to
do with why are the Jews letting the anti-Semites define what anti-Semitism
means? It was a reaction and is
dealing with writings of an Israeli who has left Israel, kicked the dust off of
his feet, moved to London, and is a self-declared anti-Semite, anti-Zionist
– a self-admitted, self-loathing Jew.
Someone sent me a text the other day that there is an
article in the last issue of Newsweek magazine (class recorded 2-2-12) on why
Jews vote like atheists. I also
found a blog by a rabbi that the reason Jews vote like atheists because they
are! It is a simple answer. 90% of Jews are either actual atheists who do not believe there is a God or are functional
atheists who live as if there IS a God, He has no relevance to their
lives. The rabbi then said, “That
is why they vote like atheists, and I am one of them.”
When I get into this, I am going to deal with some issues
that affect some of you in this congregation and some of your friends,
colleagues, and loved ones. Part
of the responsibility of the pastor is laid out not only in Jude 3 to contend
for the faith but is also laid out by the Apostle Paul on Acts 20:28-31. “Therefore take heed to yourselves and
to all the flock…” Who is he
talking to? This is at the end of
his third missionary journey when Paul was on his way to Jerusalem, and he did
not want to take the time to go all the way to Ephesus, so he stopped off at
the closest port city which was Miletus.
He asked for all of the pastors of the churches of the believers in
Ephesus to meet him in Miletus.
He is talking to a group of pastors. Acts 20:28 “Therefore
take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has
made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His
own blood.” Pastors, watch your own doctrine, teaching and application. Take
heed is a word in the Greek that means to give attention to something, to apply
your mind and thought process, focus on something.
Verse 29 “For I know this, that after my departure savage
wolves [enemies on the outside] will come in among you, not sparing the
flock.” This is everything from
persecution to the influence of false doctrine and ideas that impact the local
church. Verse 30 “Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to
draw away the disciples after themselves.” Some of you pastors are going to apostasize,
depart from the faith. So you have
savage wolves and perverse pastors. Sadly, we have had our own experiences with
pastors who fall into this category.
Verse 31 “Therefore, watch, and remember [Paul’s example]
that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with
tears.” So Paul is constantly
warning everybody about false doctrine.
I want to talk about this second question I raised “Who are
the “Israel of God?” The answer to
that is the foundation for the answer to question 1 and 3. I got an email from a distance member
of our church who got an email from someone who goes to a church that is pastored by someone who has come under the influence of N.
T. Wright and his perverted teaching on the distinction between Israel and the church which he has rejected. Wright is also a preterist and has rejected the historic doctrine of
justification by faith alone. He
has influenced some pastors who pastor churches that were formerly solidly free
grace dispensational.
The claim that was made in a Bible class just recently by
this particular pastor, who incidentally has no formal theological training,
was that the phrase in Acts 15:17 “called by My name” relates to Jacob being
renamed Israel by the Angel of Yahweh in Genesis 32. There is no connection between the two. That is usually what happens with false
teaching. You either have a leap
in logic, or you have somebody who just imposes their theology on the text,
which is called eisegesis. We talk about exegesis (ex
meaning out of) - we derive or pull out through inductive reasoning and study
of the Scripture what it teaches. Eisegesis is when
you form up a theological system that you then read into the Scriptures. You
get the Scriptures to try and fit your theological system.
The third point in his argument was that after the Angel of
the Lord in Genesis 32 asked Jacob what his name was, Jacob says Jacob. Then the Angel says after this he would
be known as Israel. What did we just learn about Abraham? This is a sign of authority over
someone else: The one in authority
has the power and ability to change the name of a subordinate. Then Jacob – the heal grabber,
the crafty one, the one who is always manipulating things – says, “Tell
me your name, I pray.”
This pastor said that when Jacob asked the Angel what his
name was, the Angel replied, “Why is it that you ask about my name?”, and this
means that the Angel is saying that Jacob already knows it. He said it is the name he just gave him
- Israel. But that is not in the text
anywhere. The pastor then says that Christians are therefore called the Israel
of God. If the Angel of God’s name is Israel and Christians are called the
Israel of God because Christians are in Christ and we are in Israel, then the
church age Christians are the new Israel.
There are a lot of people who believe this. This is just one form of the argument. There
are large numbers of evangelical Christians (most but not all come from a
Calvinistic background) who hold to this replacement theology. It is the belief
that the church replaces Israel, so the promises that were supposed to go to
Abraham are now going to be fulfilled in the church.
In maybe 1999, the Evangelical Theological Society was
meeting in Boston. Since I was in Preston City, CT, I decided to go. I saw a
lot of my former professors from Dallas Seminary and a lot of classmates. I was
talking with Elliott Johnson, a great hermeneutics professor at Dallas
Seminary. Bruce Waltke, Hebrew professor at Dallas at
one time and a dispensationalist, walked up. Ed Bloom, who was the pastor of
Bethel Presbyterian Church back in the 1960s before he became a professor at
Dallas, and Elliott Johnson walked over to Waltke and
went right after him. They asked
Bruce if he had figured out that Israel still means Israel and that the promise
that God made to Abraham still lies between the Mediterranean and the
Euphrates. Bruce Waltke has become a covenant
theologian and amillennial, so the land is now heaven
for him.
In the next two or three months, they are going to have a
large conference of these anti-Zionists who have become much more vocal in
Bethlehem. A worldwide conference of pro-Palestinian Christians who think that
Christian Zionists are a heretical sect according to Stephen Sizer, who is one of their leading advocates and authors.
What you basically have in this construction that this
pastor puts together is first of all a context problem. He does not understand
the context of either Genesis 32 or Galatians 6. Whenever you take the text out
of context, you are left with a con job. You add that to a misreading problem
(he just reads something right into that text) and add two lexical problems
(one from Genesis 32 and another from Galatians 6), you are left with a
theological problem of massive proportions.
This is replacement theology, which is the historical
breeding ground for anti-Semitism.
It really had its roots back in the allegorical hermeneutics of Origen
in the early 3rd century and became institutionalized by Augustine
in the late 4th/early 5th century.
To understand the overall context of Genesis 32, you have to
understand the Abrahamic Covenant. It is the context for Genesis
12-50. Everything from the call of
Abram in Genesis 12:1 to the death of Joseph (left dead in a coffin in Egypt as
Genesis ends) is all about God’s covenant with Abraham and the outworking of
that covenant. In that covenant,
God promised Abraham a specific piece of real estate/the land, a seed through
which there would be worldwide blessing, and all the Gentiles would be
blessed. Those statements were all
expanded in subsequent covenants.
The immediate context in Genesis 32 brings our focus on a
word play, and that word play is essential. The Holy Spirit loves a pun or a
paronomasia, which is a word play.
He uses these in numerous Old Testament books, and they are designed to
get our attention. They did not have boldface type or underline or italics, so
they used things like word plays and puns in order to get people’s attention
and to emphasize certain things.
All of a sudden you see this interchange going on that gets your
attention.
There is a word play here on the name of Jacob. Jacob means
the trickster, the supplanter, the heel grabber. He
is the youngest of a set of twins born to Isaac and Rebekah.
God had promised them that before these twins were born, the older, which was
Esau, would serve the younger. The blessing is already promised to the
younger. But the heel grabber has
to manipulate things and get it himself. We have the episode where he disguises
himself, so that his old, blind father Isaac will think he is Esau. He fixes
this favorite meal for Isaac and brings in to him, so that his father will give
him the blessing of the older son. Then he tricks his brother Esau. When Esau
came in from a hunt and was tired, worn-out and hungry. Jacob said he would sell him the bowl
of lentil stew and trade it for Esau’s birthright. He has manipulated things.
That is not the way you get it. Even though he got it, he
got it the wrong way. The right
thing done in a wrong way is wrong, so God has to teach him a lesson. The lesson is that Jacob has to move
out of the land. That is always the sign of some kind of discipline from God. He
moves up north to look for a wife and goes to work for cousin Laban. The primary reason he has to leave is because after
he has tricked Esau, Esau is breathing murder. His mother Rebekah
gives him some money and tells him if Esau finds him, he will kill him. He is to go stay with cousin Laban for awhile.
Jacob works for seven years and wants to marry Laban’s beautiful daughter Rachel. But Laban
out tricks the trickster. This is how God is bringing discipline into Jacob’s
life. He is going to become the
victim of his own methodology. You read through this story of Jacob and Laban and realize these are not likable people. You do not
want them for your neighbors. They are conning each other, and they are family
members. They are sneaky, hypocritical, always trying to get everything they
can out of the other person, not honest, backstabbing, etc. After working seven years and getting
tricked into marrying Leah, who was wearing the veil, and he thought it was
Rachel. He had to work another
seven years to get Rachel. After 14 years, he is finally beginning to get a little
humility.
This time God works things out, and he is able to go back
home. He heads back to the land.
In Gen. 31, Jacob is heading south to the land and Laban
is in hot pursuit. Rachel has stolen the family idols
which is the sign of the inheritance where the family blessing goes. As he gets
ready to enter the land in Gen. 32, Esau is going to meet him. The last time he
had any dealings with Esau, Esau was breathing threats and going to kill him. He
decides he is going to send all these gifts of sheep, goats and cattle ahead of
him for Esau to placate him. He
sends all the women and stays behind, so by the time all of this has gone past
Esau, maybe his temper will have cooled, and he will not be out to get Jacob.
Jacob is still trying to control the situation and has not
really learned to trust God yet. That is when we run into him in Genesis
32:9-12. “Then Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father
Isaac, the Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your family, and
I will deal well with you’: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and
of all the truth which You have shown Your servant; for I crossed over this
Jordan with my staff, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my
brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and attack me and
the mother with the children. For You said, ‘I will surely treat you well, and make your
descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’ ”
You see the humility there. He is
dependent upon God, looking to God to take care of him and fulfill His promise
that through him will come an innumerable multitude of descendants.
In Genesis 32:22 “And he arose that night and took his two
wives, his two female servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford
of Jabbok.”
Here is where we get into the word play. The story is about Jacob (Yaaqob),
the man. And Yaaqob is crossing over the Jabbok (Yabboq). It is the same consanants – you just shift the b and the k sound. Now
he is going to get in a wrestling match, and wrestling is yeabeq. So you have those three words – Yaaqob,
Yabboq and yeabeq – and that gets your
attention.
The map shows the path that he has taken into what is now
the Kingdom of Jordan. The
Trans-Jordan is where he will cross over into the Promised Land at a place
called Peniel.
Peniel means “God face to face” which is the
verse from which Camp Peniel took its name, so that
when people come to camp they will meet God face to face.
Genesis 32:24 “[The women were sent ahead] Then Jacob was
left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day.” He does not know who this is, but it is
a person in the form of a man. He
understands who angels are because back in verse 1 “So Jacob went on his way,
and the angels of God met him.” He
knows who angels are and can identify them. This is later identified as the Angel of the Lord, but this
is in the form of a man. So there
is this wrestling match.
The Greek verb that is used to translate wrestling (yeabeq,
Hebrew verb) is palaio. Pale is the noun used in Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle
against flesh and blood …” The Greeks named the land Palestine based on palaio
because it sounded like Philistine.
But Philistine starts with a “f sound” not a
hard “p sound”. Palaio would not make the shift from a p
to an f sound, going from Hebrew to Greek. So palaio is not based on Philistine. This is one of the myths that the
modern Arab inhabitants of the land want you to believe: that they somehow trace their heritage
back to the Philistines, and that Palestine is a terms that relates to the land
of the Philistines. But it does
not. It was the land of the
wrestler. The Greeks originated this terminology for that region and called it
the land of the wrestler. Who is
the wrestler? The wrestler is
Jacob. It has nothing to do with the Philistines; it has to do with the land of
Israel.
The wrestling match goes on all night. Jacob is not winning. The Angel of the Lord is just fighting
hard enough to keep the contest going until daybreak. Genesis 32:25 “Now when He [Angel of the Lord] saw that He
did not prevail against him…”
Jacob by this time understands that this is not just a man but is a
divine person. He is wrestling
with Him because he wants the blessing.
Now he is being dependent upon God and holding on because he wants God
to be the one to give him that blessing.
In verse 25 the Angel of the Lord touches the socket of his hip and
leaves a permanent wound. Thereafter,
Jacob will limp as a constant reminder that his life changed this particular
night.
Genesis 32:26 “And He said, Let Me
go, for the day breaks. But he
said, “I will not let You go unless You bless
me!” That is the issue. The focal point of this story is on
this wrestling match. He is
holding onto God in persistence because he wants God to bless him. Verse 27 “So He [The Angel of Yahweh,
the preincarnate Lord Jesus Christ – the pastor
got that much right] said to him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Jacob.’ ” Chisler, heel
grabber – this is not much of a name for someone who is blessed by
God. Verse 28 “And He said, ‘Your
name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with
God [Elohim. In “Israel” the el is short
for Elohim] and with men, and have prevailed.’ ” You
have struggled with God. You are
not giving up in the spiritual battle and will hold onto God for your
blessing. You have prevailed in
your problems with Laban and the others and have
learned humility and grown to spiritual maturity.
In the term Israel, el is the name of God, but the root sara is used in the same context as a synonym for
wresting and for struggling with God.
The popular etymology is that he is called Israel because he struggled
with God. There is a lot of debate
as to just exactly how you get to these things. In Hebrew and in the Old Testament, these words that are
used for these names are not always the dictionary meaning of the root
word. It’s a word play; it sounds
a certain way and so brings to mind this idea of contention or fighting. Jacob is called this because he
struggled with God and prevailed.
There is a homophone in the Greek, which means that it has
the same sound and same letters, sarar, that also means to rule. That is why
some of you have seen or heard that Israel means the prince of God or the one
who rules with God, but that is again speculation. Maybe that is the word sarar
that is translated struggled here and only used a couple of times, so we are
not really sure. But the text
tells us what the implication is that God wants us to get out of it that he is
named this because he has struggled with God and prevailed.
Then Jacob says in Genesis 32:29 “…Tell me Your name, I pray
…” He
still has a little bit of that “I want to control you, God” mentality that we
all want to hold onto. There is no
answer. Remember that the
contention from this pastor was that the implication of this is “you know who I
am.” If there is any implication,
it is “if you think about it, you will understand who I am.” But there is this mystery here cloaking
the identity of God. This is why
context is important – you have the immediate context of Genesis 32, the
broader context of the life of Jacob and the Abrahamic
Covenant in Genesis 12-50, and the broader context of the Old Testament.
In Judges 13:17-18, you have an almost identical phrase when
Manoah, the father of Samson, says to the Angel of
the Lord, who has just appeared to Manoah and his
wife and promised them they will have a child. “ ‘What is Your name, that when
Your words come to pass we may honor You?’ And the Angel of the Lord said to him, ‘Why do you ask My name, seeing it is wonderful?’ ” The Hebrew word for
wonderful is pele. It is only used to apply to God, so
when he says “seeing it is wonderful,” He is using a term indicating that He is
God; He is divine.
God is cloaking Himself. You do not get a full picture of who God is until Jesus
comes to reveal Him according to John 1. You are just reading into this text
the idea that the name Israel applies to the Angel. That is what this pastor had said. When Jacob asked, “What is Your name?”,
it is implied that “you already know My name, and it is the same as yours.” Is
that there? It is an error of
reading; it is eisegesis. He is reading something that is not in the text. He does not understand the context; he
cannot read what is in the verse and is reading things into the verse. Then he completely misidentifies the
word study which is related to Israel.
If there is a name for God in the text, what is it? Elohim. Israel. Peniel.
They are used 4 or 5 times in these verses. The only name for God that is here is Elohim,
not Israel.
In the broad context, we see that God promises to bless the
Gentiles through Abraham and his descendants. This theological argument, using the term loosely, misreads
the text because the Angel never implies that Israel is His name as well. The two key words that are
misidentified are first of all Israel, as the name given to Jacob in relation
to his new status, his new direction, and his new life. Israel focuses on Jacob and his
positive relationship to God, and later Jacob is used of Israel when they are
in carnality, like the time of Jacob’s trouble in the Tribulation. Israel is used to focus on the positive
when God is blessing them.
That is all background to understanding Galatians 6:16,
which is the close of Galatians.
Paul says, “And as many as walk according to this rule [what he has just
articulated in terms of walking by means of the Spirit starting from Galatians
5:16-6:15], peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” Notice that even in the English, it is
clear you have the prepositions repeated.
He is not identifying them with the Israel of God. He is talking about two groups of
people. The first group, them,
refers to those who are walking according to this rule. The second group is the Israel of God. The NIV translates it “even the Israel
of God,” which is a mistranslation because it is clear he is talking about two
groups of people.
The term Israel is used 43 times in 41 verses from Acts
1-Revelation 22. It is used a
total of 73 times in the New Testament.
Every single time (and I have gone through and analyzed every use of the
term Israel in the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles and Revelation) it refers to the
physical, genetic descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is a hermeneutical fallacy of the
first order to take a word that in every other use in the Bible refers to the
physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then all of a sudden give
it a totally different meaning.
There is no basis, no justification for that whatsoever. There is no foundation for it. It is just reading a theological system
into the verse.
It is clear in the Scripture that Paul always recognizes
that there is a distinction between the Gentiles and the blessing that comes to
the Gentiles through the Jews.
This is the background in Romans 15:8-9. Paul says “Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant
to the circumcision [technical term for the Jews] for the truth of God, to
confirm the promises made to the fathers.” Romans 9:4 – the covenant and the promises belong to
Israel. Verse 9 “And that the
Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written: ‘For this reason I
will confess to You among the Gentiles, and sing to
Your name.’” The Gentiles are not
equated to the circumcision; they are still distinct.
This all started in this pastor’s view in Acts 15:16. “[Quote from the Amos 9:11-12] After
this I will return [context of Amos 9 is the Tribulation, so this is the Second
Coming] and will rebuild the tabernacle of David [establishment of the
millennial kingdom], which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I
will set it up [establishment of Messianic kingdom]; (verse 17) so that the
rest of mankind may seek the Lord [Isaiah 2. All the nations will come and worship God in Jerusalem at
the Mountain of the Lord], even all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord who does all these things.”
This is where the pastor started – “called by My name” is not Israel from Genesis 32. “Called by His name” are those who
identify with the Messiah in the Messianic kingdom and those who are
believers. Those
who are going to the Mountain of the Lord to worship according to Isaiah 2.
Remember the promise in Romans 4 that is talked about as the
background in Genesis. The promise
to Abraham was that all the Gentiles would be blessed through him. They are not going to become Jews;
there is going to be worldwide blessing that is going to come through Abraham
and his descendants. In
Galatians 3:6 “Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was accounted to him for
righteousness.’ ” This refers to the time when God originally imputed
righteousness to Abraham and justified him prior to his calling in Genesis
12. The quote comes from Genesis
15:6, but it should be translated as we have seen that Abraham had already
believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness.
Galatians 3:7 “Therefore [Paul says] know that only those
who are of faith are sons of Abraham.”
It does not say sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is only the sons of Abraham –
they identify with Abraham because they are trusting in God alone for their
justification. They are trusting
in Jesus Christ by faith alone, not by works of righteousness which we have
done (Titus 3:5).
Verse 8 “And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify
the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In
you all the nations shall be blessed.’ ”
That is what Amos 9 was talking about. That is why James quotes it in Acts 15:16-17 to emphasize
that the Old Testament foresaw that the Gentiles would also be saved. The Gentiles are blessed if they come
by faith alone.
Verse 9-11 “So then those who are of faith are blessed with
believing Abraham. For as many as
are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is
everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of
the law, to do them. But that no
one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for ‘the just shall
live by faith.’ ”
Galatians is sort of the abbreviated short version of what
Paul later writes after he has meditated on it for awhile in Romans. He is pointing out that those who
follow Abraham receive the blessing of Abraham.
Verse 14 “That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the
Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit
through faith.” We are not talking
about Old Testament Gentile salvation; he is focusing on church-age salvation
of Jew and Gentile in Christ. He
goes on to talk about the promise of Abraham that is fulfilled in verse 15
“Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though it is only a man’s covenant,
yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it.” That Abrahamic Covenant is still
in effect.
Verse 16 “Now to Abraham and his Seed…” Now we get into something a little
tricky because the word seed is a collective noun. A collective noun is like people – it can refer to a
small group or a large group, a crowd.
It is a singular noun, but it has a collective meaning. Seed can be singular or plural. It is singular in the sense of apple
seed or individual seed, or it can talk about all the descendants of somebody
meaning the descendants of Abraham.
Here Paul makes a point out of the fact that the word Seed is singular,
and so the promise is to a Seed singular.
“…He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to
your Seed,’ which is Christ.” He
applies the promise of blessing ultimately to the person of Jesus Christ.
Verse 17-18 “And this I say, that the law, which was four
hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed
before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law,
it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.” Paul says in Romans 4 that the promise
is to Abraham that he would inherit the world; he would receive his inheritance
in the future.
The bottom line here is simply what Paul is saying is that
Abraham is the father of those who believe, who follow him in faith alone in
the Gospel – faith alone in Christ alone. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the line for the physical
lineage of Israel, and the term Israel is only used for those who are physical
descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The spiritual descendants of Abraham refer to those who are either
physical descendants or who are Gentiles who follow Abraham in faith. This is why Paul says in Romans 9 that
not all Israel is Israel because some are only physical descendants. You have to be a physical descendant
and a spiritual descendant to be justified and to have an inheritance in the
future kingdom.
The world is becoming more and more hostile to Israel and
the Jews. If the Jewish people are
not allowed to have their own territory, and you make statements as some
politicians have made that the existence of Israel is a problem, and Israel
does not have any right to the land; then what you are basically doing through
the backdoor passively is saying that all the Jews need to be in a land that
will not protect it. In Israel
they have a place that protects them; they have a land that is home base. It is the only place in the world where
they have true, 100% security, and the government is not going to turn against
them and persecute them for being Jewish.
If you say that they do not have a right to that land, you are tacitly
giving permission for another Holocaust and giving approval to the Jews living
in a world that is hostile to them.
Another way in which anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is from
the UN to
the various different groups that criticize Israel. Zionism does not mean you
support everything that the Jewish government does. The Israelis do not support everything that the Israeli
government does. That is a
distortion of what Zionism is. Zionism says that the Jews have a right to the
land and to their own nation and to defend it – it does not say anything
about whether they are right or wrong.
When you hold them up to a standard that is different from the other
nations, where you criticize the Israeli government for doing things that your
own government is doing and you do not criticize it for, then what you are
doing is isolating Israel and holding them up to an unacceptable standard that
is unique to them. That is anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is not just the active hostility and assault on the Jews;
it is also a passive acceptance of treating the Jews in a more negative manner
simply because they are Jews. There are many people who are guilty of passive
anti-Semitism because they take a Palestinian side. In doing so, they totally ignore a whole host of international
laws established from the San Remo Resolution in 1920 and subsequent to that
which recognized the Jewish people had a right to all the land west of the
Jordan River for a national homeland for the Jewish people.