It’s Easter weekend. “Spring Break” if you are a Gentile. If you’re a Christian, you’ll probably go to church for an hour on Sunday, drop something in the collection plate and head off to lunch after the service. Good until Christmas. Unless there’s something you’re missing.
For the bulk of human history, there were only two people-groups mentioned in the Bible. The Jews, and the Gentiles (non-Jews). There were other nations that formed as the human population grew. But from God’s perspective, as revealed in the Old Testament, the only distinction God recognized was the Jews and the non-Jews.
The Jews were the covenant-people. God made the covenant (contract) with Abraham. The obligation that Abraham took upon himself was precisely … nothing. God would do it all. He also said the covenant would last … forever.
Why is Easter important to us and the world, today? Because Jesus’ death and resurrection added a third people-group to the mix: The Christians. Unlike any other people group, the Christians are made up of people of all races, all nationalities and all prior religious faiths. God ignores their race, their nationality and the religion they grew up in. To Him, the Christians are all followers of the resurrected Jesus.
All of which brings us to this weekend. You can’t understand the Bible, Easter and thus human history, along with its impending future, without understanding that God continues to deal with humanity as if it contains only these three people-groups.
In the Jewish religious scholars’ disputes with Jesus recorded in the New Testament, they frequently referred to themselves as Abraham’s children. And indeed, they were. They remain that today. But who did Jesus claim as his father during those disputes? God, himself.
It was only after Jesus’ resurrection that the church came into existence, on the Day of Pentecost. Without the resurrection, there would be no church. If there had been no church, there would have been no Christians. If there had been no Christians, there would be only the original two people-groups: Jews and Gentiles.
God’s dealings with the Jews were as a nation, Israel. They still are. During the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Jewish nation ceased to exist. The Jews as a people-group remained. They remained nationless until 1948, when the state of Israel came into existence as the Jewish homeland. If you fail to understand the significance of Israel’s resurrection as a nation-state in 1948, then you will fail to understand what God is up to in the present turmoil that now surrounds us.
God deals with nations, just as he deals with individuals. Christians who think that America will improve when they elect an evangelical leader as president are making a big mistake. God is not limited to using Christians to accomplish his will. If that were true, the Old Testament would have no history to report.
In fact, Christians are sometimes the most difficult people for God to use to further His will. Sometimes, they are too busy doing good things in the world to notice what God is up to in the present. Thus, they neglect His invitations. Sometimes, they dig so deeply into theology that they forget it is a human construct developed by mankind to help us understand God. Rather, the theology we have created ends up being a box we use to constrain God in our world.
This Easter, there’s good news for the world. God has once again escaped the box modern-day Christianity has used to constrain him in our world.
If you think God belongs in a box, “Earth’s Final Kingdom,” book four of my “Armageddon Story” novel series, will be … unsettling. As Odessa observes, “When you hang around with this guy, anything can happen!”
