For the week of April 25, 2026 / 8 Iyar 5786

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Aharei Mot & Kedoshim
Torah: Vayikra/Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27
Haftarah: Amos 9:7-15
Originally posted the week of April 29, 2023 / 8 Iyar 5783 (revised)

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them,” says the LORD your God. (Amos 9:14-15; ESV)

Beginning Tuesday evening this week (April 15, 2026), Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, begins. This year marks seventy-eight years since the establishment of the modern state of Israel. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the vast majority of people in the world who claim strong adherence to the Bible see no relation whatsoever between Scripture and the reemergence of Israel as a geopolitical entity. You can probably guess already that I don’t agree.

First, let me say that anything I list as support for a biblical basis for God’s ongoing faithfulness to the Jewish people, including our return to our ancient homeland, does not justify everything Israel has done prior to or during the past seventy-eight years. But can anyone tell me why I even need to say this? Don’t we know that everyone and everything in this world is a mixed bag? Of all people, those of us who value Scripture must be aware that God uses broken vessels. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David all had issues. But if anything, their issues powerfully demonstrate God’s faithfulness both to them as individuals and to Israel as a nation. And yet, for some reason, the majority of the Church tends to regard Israel’s sins as unpardonable despite innumerable promises to the contrary. This week’s Haftarah (weekly reading portion from the Prophets) is but one of many examples that clearly establish God’s commitment to preserve Israel and fulfill its glorious destiny. Yet this doesn’t stop a majority of Christians from irresponsibly reading “the Church” into these promises. If that’s not bad enough, at the same time they are content to leave the judgment aspects with the Jewish people.

There are at least two factors at work here. The first is anti-Jewish sentiment. As the Church went from an exclusively Jewish movement to an exclusively non-Jewish one, non-Jewish leaders brought their ingrained disdain for Jewish people with them, unchecked. As a result, they happily affirmed scriptural critique of Israel, while deflecting God’s messages of love, concern, assurance, and restoration solely to themselves. The second factor is the misapplication of the concept of ingrafting that Paul expounds in Romans, chapter eleven. The inclusion of the nations in the Gospel is something Paul calls, in Ephesians chapter three, a mystery (see Ephesians 3:1-6). No one expected God’s blessings to be extended to non-Israelites through the Messiah in the way God always intended. But instead of receiving this undeserved grace with humility, they quickly developed a “new kid on the block” attitude, an attitude Paul adamantly warned against in Romans 11 (see Romans 11:18).

The Jewish people have endured great suffering due to the Church’s unwillingness to grasp the scriptural complexity of God’s commitment to Israel. Messiah’s coming emerged out of God’s faithfulness to Israel in order to resolve, once and for all, their alienation from God due to ongoing disobedience. But no one anticipated how this would fulfill God’s promise to Abraham to bless the nations, while also working to restore Israel to himself and to their land.

For some reason, many Christians are fine with a god (note the lowercase “g”), who is willing to receive outsiders but doesn’t have it in him to preserve and restore his own covenant people. I am aware of parables spoken to certain Jewish leaders, warning them of being cast out, while Gentiles will be let in. At an individual level, that’s true. But it is wrong to paint this as Jews vs. Gentiles. Instead, it’s between the arrogant and the humble, whoever or wherever they may be. This is why Paul would write: “For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree” (Romans 11:24; ESV).

“Their own olive tree.” Does it bother you that God’s inspired Word calls it Israel’s tree? You can redefine Israel all you like by turning the olive tree into “the Church,” but I hope it isn’t too long before you see how ridiculous that is. I don’t mean to offend anyone. It’s just that the biblical promises to my people have been misappropriated by most of the Church for far too long.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version