Spiritual Israel

 

A wonderful phenomenon has been taking place over the last 50 years. The Spirit of Elohim has been filling the faith people in the Christian world, and also turning some to the Torah of Moses and the prophets.  These people have been called to be a spiritual witness, a testimony, of the righteousness of Elohim.  Yet, while many of them would claim the title of “Spiritual Israel” at the same time, in a subtle way, they end up in replacement theology. 

In Jeremiah 31 YHVH added a “new” or “renewed” covenant promised to the seed of the forefathers of Israel and Judah:  “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel/Joseph and the house of Judah” (verse 31). The content of this pledge included writing the Torah on their hearts, which means that they would be empowered by YHVH’s Spirit to be able to keep the righteousness of Torah, as they had already proven incapable of doing so on their own, or, conversely, have chosen to completely ignore it. In Ezekiel 36 additional information about this covenant of forgiveness and removal of sin is added: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

Many who have experienced this transition through the new covenant claim the title of “Spiritual Israel”.  At the same time, they confess that they do not “feel” that they are of the natural seed of the forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel.  Not seeing the relationship between the seed and what comes forth from that seed, sets the stage for replacing it with another seed.

 Paul addresses this identity issue:  “Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain -- perhaps wheat or some other grain.  But Elohim gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body” (1^st Corinthians 15:36-38).  

In order to understand this dichotomy between “natural” Israel and “spiritual” Israel, we need to examine some very important principles from scriptures that cannot be ignored. First let us look at the “wheat/tares” parable of Yeshua, while keeping in mind the above (1^st Corinthians) scripture. 

In Matthew 13:24 Yeshua shares a mystery about the “kingdom of Elohim”, He tells of a farmer who sows a good seed in his field, and then an enemy comes and sows another seed.  This farmer was actually following a Torah injunction to only sow one kind of seed in a field.  “You shall not sow your field with mixed seed” (Leviticus 19:19).  As we know, YHVH is just and righteous in all His ways and would not violate His own Torah laws. Thus He chose to sow the seed of Abraham and Israel into the field of this earth until it reaches a certain fullness.  But unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, the real life of that seed remains hidden.  Scriptures tell us that flesh and blood, meaning the natural part of the seed, cannot inherit the kingdom of Elohim (1^st Corinthians 15:50).  But if that natural seed is planted it will sprout up a vibrant spiritual entity, which can then inherit or receive the kingdom.

Paul continues in 1^st Corinthians 15 to explain this process:  “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body… However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual” (1^st Corinthians 15:44, 46). Yes, the spirit life is hidden in the seed, but when it sprouts (into newness of life) its original identity does not change. A wheat seed is still a wheat with a spiritual germ. When buried and watered the germ that is in the seed will spring forth and become a wheat plant, and later will bear its fruit after its kind.  So how can the seed of natural Israel become anything other than “spiritual Israel”?   Yeshua points out in the parable of the wheat and the tares, that:  "The field is the world, the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one” (Matthew 13:38). 

To harvest the tares along with the wheat obviously one would have a problem the following year. The farmer would be sowing two seeds in the same field in violation of the Torah injunction, and worse, the enemy would not have to come in and sow tares as the farmer would have done it himself.