Dispies, Zionism, & Modern Israel

Sean God also promised Abraham through Hagar and Ishmael — which was Abraham trying to figure out his own way to get offspring, with Sarah’s counsel to do it. God also then said, well, I’m not getting rid of Ishmael. In fact, I’m going to make him great. I’m going to make him a bunch of nations. And they also get to claim that Abraham is their father.

So are we supposed to be blessing — why are we only blessing the one nation, instead of Abraham’s other offspring?

Philip All right, welcome to All Are Yours. You again see and hear just the two of us.

Sean All are yours.

Philip All are yours. That’s right.

Sean Duo.

Philip Correct. No matter how many heads or faces or voices you hear here, they are all yours.

Sean Well, maybe that is not true. If currently they’re hearing more than two voices in this recording, that might not actually be only good.

Philip You should check something.

Sean In the background — like, you’re listening to this in the car with your kids. Okay, well, you could hear their voices, that’s fine. But if you’re hearing other voices —

Philip — in this recording, other than —

Sean — us. Maybe get something checked out.

Philip Right. Test the spirits.

Sean We have tried to even cancel our own echoes.

Philip Correct.

Sean Other voices.

Philip Yes, that has happened.

And speaking of a multitude of voices — a topic that continues to be in the news for generations. Sometimes it’s a little bit quieter, and sometimes it’s a lot louder. But it’s like, no matter what people do, they can’t get Israel out of the conversation.

Sean Yeah. I know that the social media algorithms are intended — they’re supposed to figure out what keeps a person engaged on the platform longer. And I’ve read enough to know that what usually keeps people engaged longer are things that make them mad.

So presumably, in your case and my case at least, the algorithm would anticipate that what’s going to keep us there a little bit longer is feeling like everybody thinks weird things about Israel. That’s what’s going to keep us there, because it’s going to make us upset. So there is some possibility that people like us were targeted by the algorithm to give us even more about it.

That said — things like Tucker Carlson, at least the ones I see, again, in the algorithm. I’m assuming he doesn’t talk to every guest he ever has about Israel, because I don’t listen to him all the time. I’m assuming he’s not asking every guest about Israel. But it comes up a bunch.

Philip Yeah, just most of them.

Sean Just most of them. Good.

I mean, what’s Joe Rogan? I only listen to the ones my wife is playing in the background, so I don’t know. Is he talking to a lot of people about Israel? But wow, it seems like it keeps coming back.

Philip Right.

Sean And new news things — not just podcasts and social media, but news things. With the new mayor in New York City, who’s at least a superficially presenting Muslim, but then all the Muslims claim him as theirs, even though he’s progressive. Lots of Jewish people in New York City, or media people, asking questions like what he’s going to do with the Jews.

So it seems like it’s not just because we’re targeted —

Philip Right.

Sean — to make us mad.

Philip Right. Well then, Charlie Kirk is murdered, and Israel is brought up almost immediately.

Sean Yeah. I mean, what is Candace Owens? I don’t even really know, and I don’t really care to make sure that I can explain it all, whatever the Candace Owens part is. But isn’t she saying something like he was cutting ties with Israel? Isn’t that one of her conspiracies?

Philip Something like that.

Sean And so Israel had him killed.

Philip Right. So that’s connected there too.

And it gets brought up whether it’s in the finance industry, in the Hollywood industry, whatever that is. I think that’s one topic that could keep going for as long as you have interest in it.

Sean Probably.

Philip There you go.

Sean Yeah, because the Reformed bros — again, whether this is just the algorithm. How many Reformed bros do I follow? As opposed to —

Philip Are you and I? Are we considered Reformed bros, or are we not?

Sean Not by the truly Reformed.

Philip Okay, that’s right. We’re not invited to be a big thing.

Sean You can’t be any kind of non-supersessionist and be truly Reformed, according to the people who are trying to define it like that. I think that’s crazy. But that’s a different, more particular thing.

I was trying to think who I follow that would claim they’re some kind of, whether soft or hard, supersessionist. I’m trying to think if I follow any hard ones — you know, there is nothing left for Israel, special in any particular way whatsoever, never again, all of the promises are being fulfilled in and through the church rather than Israel; in fact, we are the new Israel. I don’t think I follow any of them.

But I still see enough of the more soft supersessionists. Okay, well, yeah, they’ll get the spiritual promises fulfilled in salvation —

Philip Right.

Sean — but the rest of the things are just for us.

Philip Right. Yeah, so there are different levels of this conversation, for sure. And I think that —

Sean Yeah, there are different levels of being wrong in almost everything.

Philip There you go.

And I’m willing to grant certain things that are above my pay grade. I’m not in all the rooms, and I’m not in all the conversations. So — do Jews have a tight grip on Hollywood? Maybe. I don’t know enough to say one way or another, or in finance or banking or whatever. If I was in that industry, maybe I’d be a more knowledgeable voice there.

So, leaving some of that aside — some of the, whether they’re conspiracies or whether there’s some truth mixed into it or not — I think that’s kind of beside the point.

There is a lot of conversation happening, though, with putting some kind of moral obligation, if I could say it that way, a moral obligation for Christians to support Israel. And specifically with the ongoing war in Gaza, and in the last couple of years with Hamas and Israel, and the United States sending money over there, or troops, or sacrificing their own lives. So that’s also been a huge conversation just as of late, apart from any kind of conspiratorial questions.

Do we owe some kind of allegiance or support to the modern political state of Israel? And I think even that has different levels. Do Americans owe political allegiance and support? Do Christians owe that? And then maybe even one level down: do dispies?

So, those who are not supersessionists at all, but who do hold to a distinction between Israel and the church — do those people have a moral obligation? Does their hermeneutic maybe drive them to support the modern political state of Israel?

So, approaching that question — and you brought up Tucker Carlson already. Tucker Carlson has had different guests, and he did have Ted Cruz on a few months ago.

Sean Yeah, I think it was June.

Philip June. And so this specific question was kind of on the table. Ted Cruz was his normal barking self, where sometimes it’s entertaining, sometimes it’s annoying. And before we started recording, you had mentioned that Ted Cruz also did not make it helpful in that conversation.

Sean Well, yeah. So that is kind of the tip of the iceberg, because we have gotten — why are we doing a conversation about Israel now, ever? That’s a reasonable thing that our thousands of listeners are probably wondering about.

Philip You’re saying you and I have been asked why we’re talking about Israel, or why we aren’t?

Sean Well, more specifically, we have been specifically asked by some of the people within our own church: how are we supposed to think about modern Israel, and our thinking and our obligations, like you’re saying, to them?

So we’re not just doing this because we can’t get Israel off of our own minds, or because we’re trying to get clicks at Christmas time or whatever. Is this really an Advent theme? In some ways it absolutely is, because Jesus was born a king of the Jews. The Abrahamic covenant was actually my first message in an Advent series, just yesterday. So that has been on my mind in terms of God’s promises to Israel — Abrahamic, Davidic, and then the new covenant, which neither one of us believes have been completely fulfilled, even if they’ve obviously been promised and Jesus purchased everything necessary to make them happen.

But we’ve gotten some specific questions. And I think the Ted Cruz interview with Tucker Carlson sort of was picking the scab.

Like you said — because I watched it again this morning, just that particular clip, it’s like three minutes long — Ted Cruz is trying to explain why he is such a champion on behalf of Israel as a senator. And he starts, and Tucker Carlson, at least in that clip, never actually lets him finish.

Ted Cruz is actually trying to give kind of a — it’s more sentimental almost than it is biblical, because he can’t remember the passage where it happens. But he says, I remember growing up in Sunday school hearing that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed.

And Tucker Carlson, from my perspective as well, asks some decent questions, trying to get Cruz to clarify almost any of what that meant. Like, okay — who’s Israel? And what does it mean to bless them?

Philip Uh-huh.

Sean What does it mean to curse them? And Cruz doesn’t really answer that. And Cruz can’t even remember where it’s at in the Bible. And Tucker Carlson actually guesses that it’s Genesis 16, which is not it either.

I mean, there are some Abrahamic things from Genesis 12 at least through 22. But anyway — here’s some clarity.

One thing is that Genesis 12 doesn’t say Israel. That is the initial place where God promises Abraham — whose name is still Abram at that point anyway, so, technically, in Genesis 12 God calls and promises to Abram that he will make him into a great nation. Which, through Isaac and then through Isaac’s son Jacob, whom God renames Israel, then there is a great nation. The great nation, God’s chosen nation, becomes Israel. But Genesis 12 doesn’t name them as that yet, because it’s Abraham.

Philip At least a hundred, if not more, years before Jacob, right?

Sean Yeah. And also then — when God says, “I’ll bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,” there’s even a question about to what degree that has corporate application at all. So the promise of being made into a great nation is distinct. “I’ll make your name great” is then next. And then, “I’ll bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you” — and that’s not, in context, plural.

So we don’t actually really even have Israel mentioned yet at that point, specifically or explicitly.

Philip Right. And right after he says “bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,” he says, “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That’s right on the tail of it.

Sean Yeah. Which seems, at that point at least, to be related to truth — truth and revelation, and then law, and then Messiah. Which Abraham never met the Messiah; he was two thousand years before the ultimate one in whom the nations, or the families of the earth, would be blessed.

There’s clarification later that the blessing will go to nations. But like you said, in Genesis 12 it’s actually all the families of the earth. Which connects back to Genesis chapter 10, where a bunch of families are delineated — those families that spread out through the earth from the dispersion at the Tower of Babel, as a judgment.

But then all of those families that start generationally to go out across the earth — these families are going to get blessing through Abraham somehow. How is that happening? Again, initially it seems like, in general, it is through Abraham and his offspring that God makes covenant promises and then gives explicit revelation, including then, even by the time of Moses, the law. So that Israel is the one who receives the patriarchs. Israel is the one who has the covenants. Israel is the one who has the law.

And ultimately then, like in Romans chapter 9, it talks about how ultimately, through Abraham comes Jesus, who is the Christ, the Messiah. And it is all those who believe in him, in Jesus, who then are truly blessed.

So — does that mean that anybody who can ever claim that they’ve been born of Abraham, we have to bless them? And what does that blessing look like?

Philip Right.

Sean Because — also, we were talking before the recording started — God also promised Abraham through Hagar and Ishmael, which was Abraham trying to figure out his own way to get offspring, with Sarah’s counsel to do it. God also then said, well, I’m not getting rid of Ishmael. In fact, I’m going to make him great. I’m going to make him a bunch of nations. And they also get to claim that Abraham is their father.

So are we supposed to be blessing — why are we only blessing the one nation, instead of Abraham’s other offspring? Well, it’s because of covenant. But that part of it isn’t described in Genesis 12 either.

So I’m not trying to be confusing, except to say: Ted Cruz, can’t he remember what passage it’s from? He says it’s Israel, and Israel is not explicitly mentioned. He doesn’t define who Israel is then or today, even though Israel isn’t mentioned.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And he doesn’t explain what it means to bless them.

Philip Right. Yeah, I mean, and so —

Sean So he’s throwing dispies under the bus without giving any helpful answers.

Philip Yeah, he did not. I think he made the whole thing worse — other than people talking about it, so maybe that’s better.

But you would say that the church is not Israel, so there’s a distinction. You’re not a supersessionist. But you would call yourself a son of Abraham.

Sean Sure. By faith, in the Galatians 3 sense. Yep.

Philip Right, exactly right. So, heirs — heirs according to promise, in that way.

So how does that distinction even work when thinking about — because people, even supersessionists, take Genesis 12:3 and apply it fully to the church. So who is this blessing toward, or for? Thinking about that “who” aspect of it.

Is there a place — and again, in that same verse, talking about all the families of the earth shall be blessed — is there a place for some sort of application for the church, or for Gentile believers, to inherit this kind of blessing?

Sean Sure. Yes, there’s a place for us to get blessing. In fact, I think that in Romans 11, where it uses the agricultural analogy of the grafting in, what we’re actually grafted into are patriarchal blessings — probably even specifically back to Genesis 12, and the blessing to all the families of the earth. So we’re grafted into that sort of covenant.

Philip Uh-huh.

Sean But in terms of why that doesn’t mean that the church is the fulfillment of all those things: there are seven distinct parts just in Genesis 12:1–3 —

Philip Of —

Sean — of what is being promised. And the last one can be considered separately from the previous ones. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” — that’s where we are.

So if we had like a map at the mall, showing where everything is, and you find the big star that says “you are here” — the Gentiles who believe in the seed of Abraham, who is Jesus, we are in verse 3. There we are, getting blessings as part of the families of the earth. But that does not equal flattening all seven down into one fulfillment.

So there are still specific things to Abram, and Abraham, then, individually. And then the great nation. So even in just a short period of God’s covenant to Abraham — and I’m trying to be technical, so, Abram rather than Abraham.

Philip Yeah, right.

Sean Even in that covenant, that short initial set of promises, there’s stuff that is to Abram, and more. And then even within that “more” than just Abram himself, it branches. It branches into the one great nation, and then into all the rest who are not that great nation. We’re over here, in this part.

Philip Right.

Sean I get that that doesn’t work on only audio, so —

Philip Yeah, right. So I’m making —

Sean — hand motions, yeah.

We’re part of the families of the earth, not a part of the great nation. So absolutely, we’re included in what God’s purpose of blessing was, but not in all of the ways.

For that matter, I suppose if we had a Venn diagram, and we had every nation listed on there, Israel would be included in that circle of all the nations. But there’s also its own way to recognize that God made explicit, even exclusive, promises to that one great nation as well.

And Galatians chapter 3 is arguing that you don’t have to be circumcised. You don’t actually have to become part of that one great nation and do all of their external religious things in order to get any blessings out of Abraham’s ultimate offspring, Jesus. We all get those by faith.

And it’s later in Galatians chapter 3, verse 28, when Paul says there’s no distinction between Jew and Gentile. Except for the fact — and that’s a verse that lots of people use —

Philip Right.

Sean — but that same verse also says there’s also no distinction between male and female. And then even between master and slave. So most of the people that you and I would be listening to or reading, they’re the kind of people who are definitely trying to make and hold on to the distinction between male and female. But Galatians 3:28 says there is no distinction.

Philip That’s it.

Sean Well, that’s because the distinction — there is no distinction in its context of how you get blessing. Blessing comes from Jesus.

Philip Right.

Sean But that is not the same thing as saying that every distinction in every way is removed.

So again, trying to summarize, answering the question that you asked: as a son of Abraham by faith, I’m in the verse 3 part of the covenant. We are in the verse 3, families-of-the-earth part, not in the part of the great nation.

As God continued to give more revelation, through Isaac and then Jacob into Israel, we learn that there are even some more specific things that that great nation is going to get, including land — which would be an everlasting possession for them, according to chapter 17. I think that’s 17 verse 8. So it’s an everlasting covenant; that phrase is used in Genesis 17:7. And that includes the everlasting possession of the land.

Well, that is not part of the 12:3 for the families of the earth. We get other parts of blessing than the ones that are specifically for that great nation.

Philip Right. So you said the blessing comes from Jesus. I’m going to hold that for a little bit, and maybe I’ll bring it up.

Sean You’re also making gestures.

Philip That’s right. Correct.

So, maybe taking the distinction between Abraham and Israel — not everything that God said to Abraham maybe applies to Israel, where some stuff does. So, allowing for that kind of categorical distinction. Or even then with that comes, the church is not Israel, but the church, believers, are sons of Abraham in that “according to promise” sort of way. So again, that kind of categorical distinction between Israel and being a son of Abraham.

Let’s say that this sort of Genesis 12:3 — “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” — let’s say it does apply to Israel. Okay, so, hypothetically: he’s saying it in context to Abraham, but let’s say we do apply it to Israel. What does that mean?

Israel — Old Testament Israel? Israel in the sense of how Paul explains that not all who are of Israel are Israel? So there’s Israel, kind of physical descendants of Abraham, and then there’s the true Israel, who are within those physical descendants, those who are elect for salvation. Is Israel the modern political state of Israel, which is maybe even a third sort of grouping?

So when we’re thinking about “bless those who bless you” — Ted Cruz is kind of lumping all of it together, which makes it really confusing. And so when Americans, Christians, and even then dispies are hearing these sorts of categories: okay, well, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to look at the modern state of Israel? How does that apply — maybe, if I’m trying to apply Genesis 12:3, and if it does include Israel, how do I apply it to my life today?

Sean Yep. Well, I would add another piece to the question, which is not just the target, but then the activity. So, what does it mean to bless anyone? And then, when it says “bless those who bless you,” who are we talking about as the target of the activity of doing the blessing?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So, one distinction of blessing. Blessing in the Bible, as far as I would argue at least, has never meant “I automatically agree with you and what you’re doing, no matter what.” Blessing is not unconditional agreement, or unconditional support. Blessing is looking for ways to honor and support — in particular, honor and support when there is righteousness being done.

So it does not mean that, in order for me to bless someone, I affirm their adultery. I don’t affirm their rebellion against God, or against lawful laws. I can’t just start by saying, oh, I’m supposed to bless them, therefore they can do no wrong.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Sometimes actually blessing would be telling the truth, calling them to repent, calling them to return to the standard that you said was yours. So, in the Jews’ case, it would be a blessing to exhort them to repent — if they haven’t already — to repent and turn to the Messiah that came from them.

So that’s not agreeing with their current apostasy, those who are continuing to reject Jesus as Lord and Messiah. It’s not blessing them to say, “Oh, you’re a Jew? All good” — individually, or then in any kind of corporate way, whether a family or then even considered together as a current nation-state.

And Ted Cruz didn’t actually ever get to explain what he meant by blessing. But it sounded a lot like, oh, well, we’re supposed to bless them, so we’re giving them unconditional support no matter whatever they do.

Philip Right.

Sean Whatever battle they’re in, we’ve got to be on their side. That actually doesn’t seem like what blessing is about.

Now, the alternative to that is: we also are not allowed to then just eliminate or annihilate them. So Hitler was not doing God’s work — even though the Jews, as rejecting Jesus as Messiah, obviously then deserved God’s judgment, chastisement, discipline. That didn’t mean that it was okay for Hitler to seek to kill them by genocide. In fact, I think the word “genocide” came about in World War II explicitly when Hitler was trying to kill all of the Jews just because they were Jews.

Philip Yeah. Well, God had that sort of instruction to Israel toward other nations, and that was explicit instruction that he did give — to annihilate other tribes or nations because of the accumulation of sin. That was not an instruction that either Hitler or any Christian receives today, that “you are God’s tool of judgment for Israel.” That’s not something that we have.

Sean Yeah. Are other nations a tool that God uses to judge them? Yes. But like you said, not any explicit instructions to eliminate every one of them.

Philip Right.

Sean And really no explicit instructions at all from God, in the same way that it was given to Israel in the Old Testament anyway.

So again, between unconditional support and unconditional, I guess, hatred — there’s no way to call “we must eliminate all of you” blessing. That probably counts more on the curse side. But somewhere in between would be a wise application of truth and support as able, especially in calling them to look to Jesus as Messiah.

So in terms of the activity, it requires some wisdom. It’s not just carte blanche, “oh, how much money do you need?”

Philip Right.

Sean A little bit of research I was doing this morning: at some point, the United States was giving three point eight billion dollars annually to Israel. I didn’t look up what percentage of our national budget that is, but I don’t make three point eight billion dollars. So that seems like a lot of money.

Philip Uh-huh.

Sean So, who are they? If “bless those who bless you,” that “you” means Israel, like you said — who is that? And I’m not opposed to recognizing that there are even some categories within that.

It certainly, if we were to look at Romans 11, means not despising or getting proud over the natural branches. And those natural branches — some of whom have been broken off, and you’re still not supposed to get proud over the natural branches, the ones that remain or the ones that have been broken off. There’s no pride over any natural branch.

So that would mean we can recognize a remnant of believing Jews. Some of them are going to be within the nation-state of Israel. So, a distinction between Jews as persons, as religious persons, and let’s say messianic Jews, who then are the remnant of natural branches that are still in the covenant — still in; they’re not grafted in, they’re naturally growing there in the covenant blessings.

Then there are other natural branches that we’re wanting to be able to be grafted back in. They’ve been broken off, but there’s a generation that’s going to come back. So obviously we can’t kill all of them and then evangelize them. We can’t kill all of them, and spurn all of them, while trying to provoke them to jealousy to return to Jesus, like it says earlier in Romans 11.

So there’s got to be a way to acknowledge and even honor the natural branches — the nation that includes Jewish people who reject the Messiah — on behalf of then calling them to repent and believe in Jesus.

It’s not the same thing as “we agree to send you F-35s or F-18s, or whatever kind of military planes we’re making these days, so that they can defend themselves” from the Palestinians or the Syrians or whatever other nations are around them that hate them.

Philip Right.

Sean Does that mean we can’t support them? I would put that military or political support into a different category than what it means to bless them in Genesis 12.

Philip Right.

Sean So, do we have political, strategic — even pragmatic — reasons, maybe, for giving them some money or military support?

Philip Yeah.

Sean Potentially. But that would be a political decision, not a Genesis 12 decision.

Philip Right. Yeah.

Sean So, I mean, what would you say? How would you answer the same question?

Philip I think that category is helpful: strategic versus moral. Even five years ago, in 2020, a lot of the questions related just within our own submission to governing authorities — is this a strategic question or a moral question? That sort of thing. It’s always good to keep those distinctions, even being able to be as wise as serpents but as innocent as doves. So: strategic and moral.

Approaching the modern state of Israel and the support that we have to them as Americans — so, just as an American state supporting Israel — to me, from my limited perspective, it makes sense strategically to have a political, military ally, a location, a unit, in the Middle East, where much of the turmoil is. Just pragmatically, if I was the president, I think it would make sense for me to try to uphold my influence in that area. Like it would if there was some kind of European conflict and I was supporting European allies, or co-belligerents, that sort of thing.

So strategically, I think it makes all the sense. Which is a different question than morally. Do we morally owe allegiance to the political state of Israel — and by “owe allegiance” I mean we pledge money, support, our own, the lives of our kids, that sort of thing?

I don’t think so. I don’t think that is a moral obligation toward the modern state of Israel that Christians have, even that dispies have. I don’t think that the biblical hermeneutic that leads to dispensationalism requires that sort of approach.

So even, you know, waving the flag of Israel — what does that mean? What does the current, again modern, state of Israel, that flag, what does it represent? Does it represent unbelief? Does it represent blasphemy? Does it represent sin? So if you’re waving that flag, what are you supporting? The flag is a symbol of something.

America has a lot of unbelief, has a lot of sin as well. But the flag of America — what does it symbolize? I wouldn’t say that the American flag symbolizes that. I think the sin of America is inconsistent with that which the American flag symbolizes. In the nation-state of Israel, is that the case, or is it different?

So even approaching that kind of moral obligation question — yeah, I like what you were saying regarding “I’m going to support them no matter what, no matter what they do.” That does not sit right even with me, who would not agree with supersessionism in any way.

Sean Yeah. Like you said, the hermeneutic. Our principle is to try to understand what it means in its context. And at times that requires that when the Scripture makes distinctions, we should try to make the same distinctions.

When the Scripture — I’m trying to think of a time when the Scripture removes distinctions. I’m actually having a hard time coming up with that. So the Scripture tells us what distinctions to make, and then how to hold on to those.

So there’s a way in which Jews and Gentiles are distinct. There’s a way in which they’re not distinct, in terms of how they get salvation. There’s no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, males and females, when it comes to how they get saved. It’s only by faith in Christ. It’s not Sabbath keeping, it’s not circumcision, it’s not baby baptism. It’s not any of those things. It’s by faith in Christ. That’s what saves us, no matter what nationality — whether the great nation from Abraham or the families of the earth. It’s by faith in Jesus. That distinction is crucial.

Ted Cruz did not make any distinction between the moral and the strategic, at least in that short clip with Tucker Carlson. In fact, he was actually trying to make it a moral obligation that he learned when he was a kid in Sunday school.

Philip Right. Like it’s a sin not to.

Sean Yeah. And that is not paying attention to any sort of distinctions. That’s actually a misapplication.

A sort of simplistic dispensationalism, perhaps, allows for the claim that Israel can do no wrong.

Philip Mm-hmm. Right.

Sean But the whole Old Testament is full of Israel doing wrong.

And I guess this is another part of the conversation — which is especially supersessionists who say that Israel has sinned, and therefore not only have they rejected the Messiah, but God has rejected them from being his people, and therefore there’s nothing left for them. Look at all of their sin.

But the whole point of God’s grace is that he saves sinners. So Israel in the Old Testament kept sinning, and God kept showing them grace. That doesn’t mean each and every individual Israelite was saved. But a bunch of them were, and the nation overall continued to be accountable for the good that God was giving them.

When Jesus came, the majority of his own people rejected him and did actually then, in cahoots with the Romans, have Jesus killed. And some of them, still, God showed grace to. In Romans 9 through 11, this is part of Paul’s point — that he himself was a Jew who was saved by God’s grace. And there was a remnant within national Israel, even at that point, that God was showing he was not entirely done with that people, because he was preserving for himself a small number, on the way toward using Gentiles. And what a great mystery this is.

We tried to talk about this in the episode where we didn’t use “dispensational” or “supersessionist” or whatever, any of those labels — the story of, okay, God has got the remnant, but he’s also, in a mystery kind of way in the Old Testament, planning to use the salvation and blessings unto the families of the earth for the sake of getting back to blessing that one great nation with the rest of the things that he promised them.

So — are they sinful? Are they immoral? Are they blasphemous? Are they idolatrous? Just like every other sinner God has ever saved. So that’s not limiting God, or making God in a conditional way then turn from his promises. It means at the right time, through the means that God has chosen, he will also grant a corporate repentance to that generation, where then the overlap between the believing group in the Messiah and the nation-state will be one.

Currently it’s a subset. And they might not even be living within whatever borders or boundaries the nation has. They could be living in the diaspora, scattered throughout the earth.

Philip Right.

Sean But at a certain time all the things are going to come back together, when God fulfills that promise to give them new hearts — the house of Israel, the house of Judah. He’s going to make the barren cities full again.

So there’s great reason to not give up hope in what God is going to do — which doesn’t require us right now to say that it’s fulfilled, or that they can do no wrong. That’s a simplistic failure to make appropriate distinctions.

Philip Right. Well, and a lot of the support / not-support revolves around borders and land. And in some sense there are moral obligation questions on both ends, where it’s like: if you think that Israel deserves or must have this border, then you’re a Zionist. If you think that Israel should not make other people move out of this land, then you’re an antisemite.

So you do have this kind of black-and-white, you’re either here or you’re here. And there’s no room for strategy, there’s no room for nuance, there’s no room for clarity or substance or context.

Sean Wisdom.

Philip Wisdom, right.

So even Christians approaching that sort of question — I think it’s not as simplistic as a lot of the talking heads want to present it. Even the border question, which is what Zionism is: supporting, or believing, or working toward Jews having this certain area of land right now today.

So again, is Zionism a moral obligation? Is it a strategic obligation? Or should we completely oppose Zionism altogether? I think again that conversation, that question, is made out to be much more simplistic than it should be, or than it is.

So — with all of your experience and level of knowledge about the political question of Zionism.

Sean How can I make this into a soundbite?

Philip There you go. Yes.

Sean How can I answer all of those issues in a soundbite that could be a great clip for our YouTube shorts?

Philip There you go.

Sean Yeah. It is one of the challenges. And I say this as a person who cares about a lot of covenantalists, and at least some of the soft supersessionists I have more admiration for in some ways.

Philip You’re softer toward them.

Sean I guess, yeah.

Some of why I think it sells is because it flattens everything into some more simplistic answers.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And Christians — I mean Americans — we love our bullet points. We love our trifolds, or double-folds with three-part brochures. And if you can’t get it into a tweet, then do you even know what you’re talking about? If there is no thirty-second elevator pitch, do you even know anything that you’re talking about?

And I like summaries. I like bullet points, in their place. But there can be a way of flattening what should not be smooshed together, instead of holding some things separately.

I mean, you shared with me that one of our dispy friends is opposed to Zionism. You named a son Zion — which isn’t the same thing as naming him Zionism, but obviously that’s one of those inflammatory words, Zion or Zionism.

And when I was trying to do some looking up of who says what Zionism means — I’m not opposed to there being a kind of Zionism. But it kind of depends on, well, how much do I have to want it in order to fight for it or pay for it? Who is going to die in order to make my dreams of Zionism come true?

I’m not committed to the Jews being in their own land with a certain number of borders no matter who dies. But am I opposed to Jews being in their own land, in what God said would be a land that he gave them? Am I opposed to them being back in that land? No. So if that makes me Zionistic-ish, I think I’m probably okay with that.

But I definitely don’t think that this counts as the fulfillment of God’s promise, because their restoration to the land, in terms of his covenant promises, also belongs with him regenerating their hearts. And that has not happened corporately at all.

Philip And this is where I’m bringing back the thing I was holding, about blessing coming from Jesus. You had mentioned that before — that even for them, blessing comes from Jesus.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So how does that connect to even the land fulfillment promises — restoration versus regeneration and all of that?

Sean Yeah. I think I would say — and again, feel free to say if something is dumb, if you think that it is, or give a different angle or clarification — but God’s common grace is not opposed to his supernatural, or even regenerating, grace, or covenantal special grace.

So, can he use providential means to put pieces in place for the sake of then the next, maybe higher-level, part of his promise? I’m good with that.

So when he fulfills the new covenant to give new hearts to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and that includes a restoration to the land and the boundaries that he’s promised — when that happens, let’s say when God lights that match to cause the fire, does that mean that thirty seconds before is when he gathered the material for the fire? Or could he have been gathering the material for the fire for generations?

And then when the match is lit and the pile is set on fire — and I mean that in a positive way now, like a revival sort of fire catching. Could he have already brought back a good number of Jews into the land, and then finished off with new hearts? Which I think — probably there’s some more attack that’s going to come on them first, according to what we see as futurists, still anticipating some of the things to come. So some of them need to be in the land to fulfill the attacks that they’re going to get, on to then the fulfillment of the promises to give them the land with new hearts.

So I’m not convinced that the only way to make it happen is that he gives new hearts to all the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and then he picks them up by the back of the neck from Canada and drops them off into Israel on that one day or whatever, and now it’s fulfilled.

So it seems reasonable to me that in his providence — the Holocaust, which, I’m not a Holocaust denier, I think that there was an actual massacre, an intended genocide of the Jewish people, in World War II under Hitler. So is it possible? I think it’s not just possible — I think we can see that God’s providence used that atrocity, that evil, that wickedness, to provoke a sort of sympathy among the nations for the Jewish people.

How much of that did they deserve? I mean, just in a common grace kind of humanitarian “they’re image bearers, dang” sort of way. Okay, well, is there something we can do that would be a support to them? It seems like in God’s providence he used one ditch to kind of pop them back out and get some approval and support from other nations, to bring them back and let them be a nation-state again in part of the land, at least. In 1948.

So, is that Zionism? It seems like it’s kind of a Zionism. I don’t have any problem with — again, in God’s providence, common grace — allowing that nation to have a place again. Would I say that they’ve got to have it no matter what, and if you disagree you’re an antisemite? No.

But yeah — what would you say?

Philip Yeah. I think there’s a time, like what you’re talking about, where the regeneration will be with restoration. Those things must come together. At some point those things will be hand in hand, in overlap. You will not have a generation of Jews regenerated and not restored to the land. So we believe that, again, as not being supersessionists — there will be a point where those two groups will overlap. That is a must.

Sean The land is not spiritualized into all of our hearts.

Philip Right, exactly.

So, what order do those events happen in? Or — like what you’re talking about, can some of that wood be gathered together for the kindling now? I could hold that in the realm of possibilities. I could also hold that in the realm of past experience, that God has done similar things somewhat.

When he delivered them out of Egypt, were they all regenerate? No. They were whining and complaining the entire way. And also were receiving the consequences of their whining and complaining by extermination — big amounts of them at a time.

And we’ve seen a lot in the Bible where restoration would follow repentance, to an extent.

So in the realm of possibility, yes, I could hold it in that hand. I would not hold it today as a must — meaning, like, we must fight for restoration because the Bible says that’s their land.

What was the political landscape in 1947, 1948, when America and Europe decided to kind of give that land to them? Who was controlling it — the United Kingdom — and in what sense did they have that influence? What kind of repercussions did that create? To me, all of that is more of a political question.

And is it strategic? Maybe. But also, what kind of political interests did certain characters have in that decision? God uses those kinds of means as well. Cyrus had certain political interests. Nebuchadnezzar had political interests, that God used for his own ends.

So, 1947, 1948 — was that a morally good decision? I’m not sure. Was it even a strategically good decision? A lot of the current conflict and bloodshed — is that a result of some of that decision? Was that premature? Maybe. I just don’t have enough information; I wasn’t in those rooms, in those conversations.

Nonetheless, I know that God has and is using all of that for his own ends — and even the kind of accountability that he puts on the Jews, on Israel. Like, here, I gave you guys another shot. What are you doing with that?

Sean Well, let’s say the only gatherers of the wood for the woodpile were Jews. And they wanted a huge pile of wood, but not the fire. They might have even used Bible verses. They could have used the Torah apart from Jesus, still anticipating the Messiah coming — without meeting the Messiah at all. They want to build this huge pile of wood, but they don’t want Jesus.

Well, can God use that? Yeah, he can use that to set it up for the people who are going to be on fire by the Spirit.

But also, I think accountability is a great word for — okay, those people who are getting God’s kindness of a good thing, a thing they want. He keeps giving them good things, that then they are more accountable for. What are they going to do with his kindness? It’s meant to lead them to repentance.

So God doesn’t just judge by taking things away to make a point. He oftentimes gives great things that the person thinks that they want. But if they don’t actually turn to him in dependence, in faith, repenting from their sin, then they’re more accountable in judgment for the good that they got from God and did not receive as from him.

So, can those people be used by God to put the pile in place? And then can he judge them for putting the wood in the pile?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Yeah, of course, both. The pagan emperors or kings — they certainly have been used to put things in place where God wanted them, and then they got judged for it, because they did it in pride. They did it for their own name.

Philip Right.

Sean So that can happen to the modern Jews as well.

Philip Right.

Sean Yeah. Whether or not it was good for them to go back to their land in the forties — I think it’s fair to say, well, in God’s providence he set it up so that they could go. And does that mean that everything is good about it? No. The phrase, you know: God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. That applies to nations as well as to individuals and our individual stories.

Philip Right. Well, we’ve solved all the questions.

Sean Man. And I’m glad — there’s, you know, we’ve got other problems.

So what did we decide? We decided — well, no, there is actually one more thing that I want to say. Because when I was doing some more research, I did learn about a few different significant Jewish lobbies, lobbyist groups, in the United States.

Some of them are what Tucker and Ted Cruz were talking about, like AIPAC, which I had to look up. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee. And that was actually registered as AIPAC in 1959, but started in 1951 — and it was called, in 1951, the American Zionist Council of Public Affairs. But it was started by an Israeli government official.

So you’ve got the Israeli guy coming to start a government lobby. Why? What is it about Americans that makes us so — I mean, because we’ve got stuff.

Philip Right.

Sean We’ve been blessed. And so they’re coming to get some of that. Which in one way could be seen as part of our jealousability, provocative — look at what God has given us. Except we’re not giving credit to God. So that’s not going to help in the same way.

There’s another one called J Street. So AIPAC and J Street are apparently the two biggest current Jewish lobbies, Israeli lobbies, in Washington, D.C. J Street obviously stands for J — but also, I learned, because most of the big lobbyist groups in Washington, D.C. have offices on K Street. So J Street is a play on K Street, and with the Jews. But it is more of a two-state, so Palestinian and Israeli, kind of lobby. And I guess J Street does a bunch of supporting of the Squad. So that can’t be good.

Then there’s the Anti-Defamation League, which is more of an international group, founded in 1913.

And part of the reason why I bring those up is because if we move into the category of “should we support them politically, militarily, strategically” — man, I’m not sure. I have too many skeptical bones in my body to think these Israeli lobbyists are really the ones that we should be giving a lot of attention to.

Philip Right.

Sean So we need more than just Israeli lobby groups helping us know how involved we’re supposed to be.

Philip Right.

Sean Which gets back into some general: how involved, strategically, should the United States be anywhere else in the world? In the Ukraine-Russia conflict, war; in other wars around the world; Afghanistan — we left all of our millions of dollars of equipment there.

So I think that we’re failing as the United States, morally and strategically, in the majority of the ways. It does seem like, at least in Trump’s second administration, he’s been a little bit more on the pragmatic side, and whatever he’s done with Israel seems to be a little bit more underneath “America first,” as opposed to alongside of us, like we should be trying to take care of them as much as we’re taking care of ourselves.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So that’s at least a little bit more savvy.

Philip Right.

Sean But it seems like we just aren’t doing any of it very well. And that starts with not being able to make good distinctions.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Which clearly we have offered in this last hour.

Philip There you go.

Yeah, I think the principle of ordo amoris, the order of loves, definitely applies. And I do think that there are closer-to-home loves that we are responsible for before waving the flag of Israel, in that sort of thing.

Sean Does that make you an antisemite?

Philip I don’t know. Maybe YouTube won’t even post this.

Sean Dang it.

Philip But yeah, as Christians, we do have our families, our church, our brothers and sisters, here. Our countrymen in America. So that is a closer-to-home love, where we do have some kind of moral obligation.

And I think those questions are a little bit easier to dissect and answer. So, not to be swayed by political jargon trying to bind our consciences — I think some of those other questions our consciences are bound by, and should be. We do owe love and support to our family, to our church, to our neighbors. That much is clear.

Sean Well, and receiving — better receiving — those blessings is part of what God says he will use to bring about the next steps in his plan to bless Israel again at the right time. So we don’t need to look across the fence first. We need to maximize what God has given us as blessings, and expect that he’s going to be using that in a provocative way, even to Israel explicitly.

Philip Right.

Sean And if we are in that Genesis 12:3, blessings to the families of the earth, then we ought to be paying attention, stewarding, maximizing those blessings, seeking more of those blessings, in a way that then has some gravity, some jealousability.

Philip Mm-hmm. All right. There you go. People could let us know if there are more questions, but I don’t think —

Sean — anybody who made it to the end of this episode.

Philip Yeah, we’ll see.

Sean Yeah.

Philip All right. That’s it. Out.