No worries...it’s busy life.
I see them fitting in as the scriptures tell us.
Why did God choose the Israelites in the first place, and what role were they to play in biblical history?
The Bible tells us that God chose Abraham (the only person in the Bible to be called “Jehovah’s friend”) to be the father of a great nation through whom a seed would come....this was part of Christ's credentials.
James 2:21-23....
“Was not Abraham our father declared righteous by works after he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that his faith was active along with his works and his faith was perfected by his works, 23 and the scripture was fulfilled that says: “Abraham put faith in Jehovah, and it was counted to him as righteousness,” and he came to be called Jehovah’s friend.”
So what was the relationship of this nation to Jehovah? It was the only nation on earth to be in a covenant relationship with their God, with every individual obligated by birth to keep the laws God gave to them, with often severe penalties if they failed to uphold them. But along with the penalties, God also provided a way to forgive repentant ones with a sacrificial system that could grant temporary forgiveness, and that needed to be repeated often. Blood was used to represent life.
God gave a perfect law to imperfect people to remind them on a regular basis of the need for the promised seed.....their Messiah...the savior who would bring the rulership of God's Kingdom to the earth and install the Israelites as his "kings and priests".
Because they were in a covenant with Jehovah, he had told them that it was based on their obedience to his commands, (Exodus 19:5-6) which if we check Israel’s history, they never were. So from God’s standpoint he kept his end of the covenant in force until his purpose in connection with his chosen nation was fulfilled.
Isaiah had prophesied that
"only a remnant" of natural Israel would be saved, (Romans 9:27) and Jesus was sent only to
“the lost sheep of the house of Israel”....he was
not sent to the corrupt religious leaders, whom he pronounced as incorrigible in Matthew 23....bound for “Gehenna”.
He finished his judgment on Israel with these words...
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the killer of the prophets and stoner of those sent to her—how often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings! But you did not want it. 38 Look! Your house is abandoned to you. 39 For I say to you, you will by no means see me from now until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in Jehovah’s name!’”
In the intervening two thousand years, the natural Jews as a nation have never
“blessed the one who came in Jehovah's name”....the one Jehovah sent to to save them. They reject him as much today as they did back in the first century.
So in lieu of that situation God chose a new nation to serve as
"the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). These were made up of the faithful Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah, and also the Gentile believers who came into God's nation later. (Acts 15:14) Fleshly Israel was cast off...abandoned, stripped of the right to be God's
"royal priesthood and a holy nation". (Matthew 21:43)
This promise made to his apostles on the night that he instituted the new covenant.
“However, you are the ones who have stuck with me in my trials; 29 and I make a covenant with you, just as my Father has made a covenant with me, for a kingdom, 30 so that you may eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom, and sit on thrones to judge the 12 tribes of Israel."
These were the first, or foundation members of
"the Israel of God"......spiritual Israel. (Romans 2:28-29; Galatians 3:29)
Fleshly Israel counted on their fleshly relationship with Abraham to see them through their disobedience, but as John B told the Pharisees....
"Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. 10 The ax is already lying at the root of the trees. Every tree, then, that does not produce fine fruit is to be cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matthew 3:9-10) The ax fell...the trees were cut down.
All that was promised to fleshly Israel was passed on to spiritual Israel. Types and shadows are all there in the Hebrew scriptures.
I see a spiritual temple in heaven that was represented by the physical Temple in Jerusalem.
It was no coincidence that the literal temple in Jerusalem was destroyed after Christ's death, but never rebuilt. There was no longer a need for a physical temple.
Since God's royal priesthood serves in this spiritual temple they are taken from the earth and "born again", resurrected in a spiritual body just as Jesus was to serve God as High Priest along with his elect, and bring blessing to redeemed mankind on earth. (Revelation 21:2-4)
It simply makes sense as we study the scriptures and a 'big picture' emerges that ties Genesis and Revelation together as the beginning and end of one story.....the salvation of the human race, enslaved to sin and death through the actions of one man (Romans 5:12) until a benevolent benefactor provided the redemption price....willingly and lovingly, to free them and restore them to the life God first purposed for the human race...everlasting life in paradise on earth.....
