True Israel, True Son [Wednesday in Advent 4]

 

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 2 Peter 3:8-4

• St. Matthew 3:7-12

Grace to you and peace from Him Who is and Who was and Who is to come; from Jesus Christ the faithful Witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. (Rev 1)
 
Who this evening finally reveals His True Israel to us, saying:
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
 
Our Wednesdays in Advent have been building to this evening and hopefully you have seen where God’s Word has been leading us. Let’s retrace the path:
 
We talked about Geographic Israel of earth and stone. That was instituted or created to give a space on earth for Jesus to be born. The Old Testament Israel, though difficult to understand sometimes, came down to a Promise made by the Lord to His People of Promise. Then New Testament Israel was the Promise fulfilled, mainly on the last day, when His people would be gathered to His body.
 
In each, we find a need for a holy God to act on His own. He must create the geography, He must make and uphold the Promise, and He must keep it forever. Our problem is, when we think of Israel, we think of it as just another nation of people that must secure its own borders, language, and culture. 
 
This becomes painfully obvious when we hear of Jacob wrestling with God on the 2nd Sunday in Lent. If you remember the story, Jacob is running from his older, twin brother Esau, whom he thinks wants to kill him. He sent his family and things ahead of him and is alone, when the Lord comes down to meet him, beginning the strife lasting till morning. 
 
The Lord is about to leave when He decides to change Jacob’s name to Israel, He says, “for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Gen 32:28). Now most have taken this as the definition of “Israel”. And that makes sense. Jacob has just wrestled with God, is wrestling with his brother, and then we even have God explaining the name. Or so we think.
 
In fact, the language Moses uses here might mean something else entirely. It is by no means certain that the verb, to wrestle, is etymologically linked to our name “Israel”. For example, when we say, "we named him Bob because that seemed like a good idea," we certainly don't mean to say that the name Bob means "good idea".
 
One, extra-Church thought is that Israel means He Retains God, or slightly more elaborate: “He Has Become A Receptacle In Which God Can Be Received And Retained”. This most primary Biblical concept was obviously revisited in the story of the manger in which the Word was received in the flesh.
 
Regardless, it is St. Jacob who gives us our clue to a good definition and it is in his description of the event. When he says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered” (Gen 32:30), he is describing the place where the incident occurred, but he is doing it using his new name. For the “ra” part of “Israel” is from the Hebrew verb “to see”.
 
Ish - man, ra - sees, El - God. Man Who sees God.
But this doesn’t start with Jacob. the Lord appeared also to his father, Isaac in Genesis 26:2 and his grandfather, Abraham, in Genesis 12:7. He literally walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden before that. So are all these men Israel too?
 
On top of this, we have to wrestle with God’s Word when He declares to Moses, “no man shall see Me, and live”, in Exodus 33:20, and even Jesus in John “No one has seen the Father at anytime, but the only-begotten Son” (1:18).
 
So St. John has given the answer right away: Jesus is the Only begotten Who has seen God. Jesus is the true Israel, for He has seen God and lived, never to die again. This is how we now should read Israel in the entire Bible. the Lord tells us in Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” and Exodus 4:22 interprets for us saying, “Israel is my firstborn son.”
 
 Geographic Israel and Old Testament Israel were created to point to just such a truth, that God will be located on earth in His own Body. The New Testament Israel made the future promise that the Body will be comprised of believers, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor 12:27), and Christ Jesus Her head (Col 1:18).
 
 When St. Simeon gives us the Nunc Dimittis in St. Luke 2, he sang of the glory of Thy people Israel”, of which he meant Christ, for the Head is the glory of the body (1 Cor 11:7). This was hymn 938 this evening, which we sang. 
 
 All points to Christ as Christ is the true Temple and the True Shepherd, Who gathers His people as a hen gathers her flock. Geographic Israel failed to do this, but Christ has succeeded in gathering all under Word and Sacrament. Old Testament Israel failed as well, but Christ fulfilled the promise to be King, or Head, forever. 
 
 New Testament Israel must have an impossible Body, able to resurrect from the dead and contain all believers from all time. Only Christ Jesus, both God and man, has such a body which can be everywhere at once, even Communion for you. 
 
 And finally, being baptized into the True Israel of God, we sing and actually mean it:
 “Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face;
Here would I touch and handle things unseen;
…
2 Here would I feed upon the bread of God,
Here drink with Thee the royal wine of heav'n;” (LSB 631:1-2)
 
The Israel of God is among us today, for He is the Only-begotten Son of God, Come to save us from our lowly exile, and wash and feed us His salvation, purchased and won on the cross. And don’t let no one tell you different.