How to talk with your kids about Israel

Nic (00:00):
We’re starting with the story, the biblical story, how to bring your kids into the story of scripture. It really is the best place to start because it is a story and getting them into that because there’s mystery in story, there’s drama in stories.

Tabatha (00:13):
Oh yeah.

Nic (00:13):
There’s gray, not black and white in stories. There’s people that fail in stories, people that are redeemed in stories, people that God uses and then they fail and then they get redeemed. And then there’s people that are enemies in stories and good guys in stories, right?

Tabatha (00:27):
Well, in story, identity is formed in the story. So you really can’t skip over the story and really know who you are even or what’s going on or why the victory at the end is so sweet. And that’s why I do think Christians, this is essentially a reason why we struggle with Israel and we do have a bit of a blind spot and we struggle with that sort of maybe avoidance of knowing how to relate to them and then therefore avoidance of them. It’s just because when we’ve glossed over those key events, we’ve lost a lot of the story and therefore we have lost in some ways the anchor of their identity and ours in relation to them.

Nic (01:18):
Well, hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Covenant in Conflict Podcast. I am Nic, your host today. If we haven’t had the chance to meet through a recent episode, I am the founder of the Center for Israel, helped found this with a team of people and it’s a joy that you’re with us today to watch. The heart of this podcast is to look at ancient truths and modern issues and to see how they connect with one another, even though at times they can sit in conflict with one another. So the point of the Covenant and Conflict podcast is to look at covenantal truths of scripture and then examine how they sit in conflict with modern issues that you’re facing as a follower of Jesus. So today is very special for me because I am going to invite, I’m having onto the podcast, my wife Tabatha, who has been along for the ride since we founded the Center for Israel in 2019 and even dating further back to that, obviously everything that God has called me to do, he has called her to do because as a family we’ve received a focus in ministry from him with Israel and the Jewish people at the center of that.

(02:24):
So we’re excited to talk together with you today about a really important topic and that’s how do you talk with your kids about Israel? So I want to welcome Tabatha onto the podcast.

Tabatha (02:34):
Thank you.

Nic (02:35):
How are you?

Tabatha (02:35):
I’m very glad to be here with you. I hope we have fun.

Nic (02:39):
You feeling good? Yeah. Thin we’re going to have any arguments on the air in front of

Tabatha (02:42):
Everybody? Hopefully not on camera. We have a very passionate relationship.

Nic (02:46):
That’s a good way to put it. Yeah,

Tabatha (02:47):
That’s how I’m framing it.

Nic (02:48):
Exactly. Well, I’m excited for you to hear from Tabatha, not just because she’s my wife, but I legitimately mean this. I think she is an expert. She is probably cringing at me saying this, but she’s an expert on some of the things that we’re going to be talking about and she has the academic backing to back that up because you have a master’s in practical theology and with a concentration in the land of the Bible.

Tabatha (03:10):
Yeah. Shout out to the King’s University. Wonderful. Check it out. And yes, we have that wonderful specialization in the land of the Bible, which is super fun. It’s essentially like Bible geography, but even more.

Nic (03:26):
So we’re going to talk about how to talk with your kids about Israel. And we were talking earlier this morning, not how to talk to your kids about Israel, but how to talk with them. Actually, one of the more important things about this topic in wanting to share what the Bible says about Israel is to talk with them and not talk at them. And some of the reason why we feel the younger generation is having a hard time with this topic, it’s very complicated, is because they’ve been talked to and not with. So how to talk with your kids about Israel and talk… Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about some of the things on our family, setting the context for why are we talking about this conversation?

Tabatha (04:04):
Yeah, sure. I know I would definitely not say we have an expertise, but we sure do have a lot of experience that I’m really happy to share. So when we were dating, we went to our first event where we started to learn about God’s heart for the Jewish people, his ongoing commitment to Israel. We were literally just dating, and if you remember that in 2007. So it’s really been a 20-year journey for us and we have just… I can’t even express how much we’ve gained from connecting to the Jewish community and all our friends. And just over the years, it’s just been unexpected in many ways. Obviously, we lived in Israel for a year in 2014 to 2015 for you to get your master’s degree at the Hebrew University in

(04:52):
Jerusalem. Not in theology. Yeah. No, but Albert Einstein, I always throw this out there, helped found that university. So cool. But yeah, that was a learning experience. And then we’ve just been in Christian Jewish relations a lot of that time. So yeah, we’re just happy to be here. And for us, talking with our kids about Israel and the Jewish people is something… As Christians, we have a Bible, so we have to pick this topic up if we value the Bible and if we read scripture because it’s all about them. And so even for us, it’s challenging. Again, I don’t feel like an expert. I just feel like we’re trying to grow and so anything that we have to offer, we want to share today.

Nic (05:38):
That’s right. I’m glad you made that point earlier because I was about to say, and we also have kids, so we have some experience

Tabatha (05:46):
In

Nic (05:46):
Talking with kids about Israel.

Tabatha (05:48):
Right. Eight through 14, three kids and an 11-year-old in the middle.

Nic (05:52):
Yeah. Some of what we’re going to talk through obviously is real time that we’ve been learning with our 14-year-old who is a passionate lover of Israel and the Jewish people actually. And she’s a great advocate for what the Bible says about Israel and the Jewish people.

Tabatha (06:07):
Yeah. I was about to say she’s a crusader, but maybe I shouldn’t use that language. But yeah, she’s…

Nic (06:12):
I think that the description would fit with her, right? Yeah. She’s very passionate and she talks a lot about… And her kids in her class, she goes to a Christian school, but kids in her class are struggling with some things that we would say are not founded in the Bible. And so she’s helping us even think about how are kids her age thinking about this topic.

Tabatha (06:35):
Yeah, it’s all over for them. They’re just receiving a lot of people, voices with a lot of different ideas and they’re asking good questions, but some of the questions that are coming up for them are because they’re listening to sources that have essentially a bias or a prejudice against Israel. So it’s actually really challenging for all of us because they’re asking questions that we’ve never asked. Our generations haven’t. But I think it’s kind of bringing the rubber of the road. We really do have to deepen. We need to deepen. We need to go to a deeper place as Christians and how we relate to Israel.

Nic (07:14):
The heart for us doing this particular topic is because one, the operational mission of the Center for Israel is to help you understand Israel. And one of the quotes we’ve said many times on this podcast, if you haven’t heard it before, it’s a Derrick Prince quote, which is that if you don’t understand Israel, then you don’t understand the Bible. So everything that we really try to collapse into what we do at the Center for Israel is to actually not just help you understand a niche topic, but it’s actually to help you see the whole of the biblical story, which Israel and the Jewish people are at the center of. So as we go through the podcast today, this is a question that we’ve gotten a lot from parents and sometimes older parents than us even, who just grew up in a biblical worldview. They just grew up saying, “Hey, Genesis 12: three say, I will bless those who bless you.” Romans 11 says, “God has not rejected Israel.” So they just take it as just normalized truth, and then their kids are going to college and they’re being challenged with people who did not grow up with a biblical worldview.

(08:16):
And we want to help you have answers to navigate through this conversation with your kids. So because this topic is so wide and extensive, we want to make sure that it stays on target and is helpful for you, which is why Tabatha has her laptop and I, maybe for the first time on the Covenant Conflict Podcast, have show notes. I actually feel like we’ve just taken this podcast up a level.

Tabatha (08:38):
That’s true.

Nic (08:39):
I have some show notes here. Yeah,

Tabatha (08:40):
Look.

Nic (08:41):
But the heart of this is obviously to make sure that we have done a lot of work in thinking about this. Tabatha has done a lot of work in thinking about this, and I want to make sure that we get you the right content. So let’s start somewhere. We kind of backed into this a little bit, and that is that Israel is central to God’s plan in the biblical narrative. So why don’t we start there and just build a wide foundation for people who are watching or listening and begin to help frame this out as we get down. We’ll go from the wider to the particular in the conversation.

Tabatha (09:11):
Right. I think we felt like the very first tip, if you will, that comes to mind in conversations with your kids, and I feel like we’re not just talking about teenagers, this is for any child because when you read God’s word together, you’re learning about Abraham from age three, four, five. So this can be a topic that we approach from the earliest ages, but you really just don’t have to start with theology, even though theology is important here, and we’ll talk about that, but really you just start with the story. You don’t have to have it all figured out, but you look at your Bible and you know what God has done in history and you start there going… Okay, for example, when my kids and I are talking about it, they’ve heard this once, they’ve probably heard it a hundred times, but I always tell them, first of all, we believe that the Bible is God’s word.

(10:06):
And as you can see, Israel and the Jewish people are the central figures in the Bible along with God, and it’s all their interactions with him, all their experiences with him. Some have called it actually the Jewish family diary. Now, Jewish people use that about the Hebrew scriptures with the Tanak or the Old Testament as Christians call it, but I’ve also heard it referred to by Jewish believers in Jesus looking at the New Testament, it’s very Jewish texts, very Jewish authors. Every author of every Bible of the book is Jewish and has a Jewish worldview with possibly the exclusion of Luke. And he still was very influenced by a Jewish worldview. Most of the time their audience, I don’t know, I don’t have the stats, but maybe 75%, their audience was Jewish people. And so this goes throughout the Christian Bible, through the New Testament, all the way to Revelation, very Jewish.

(11:08):
We don’t have to avoid that with our kids. We can tell them how thankful we are that this family, the descendants of Abraham, whom God made a covenant with, which is a very key point in world history that Christians don’t always emphasize as much as we could in the gospel story, we can tell them that we’re so thankful they wrote everything down and it was also, which we of course have a very high view of God’s word. It’s the inspired word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, but it’s also like a diary. They experienced him and everything we know about God’s character is through these experiences they had, and then they were shown to us that he’s a father. We wouldn’t even know that. And so I think we forget, we take some things for granted that’s been handed to us by them.

(11:55):
So I like to start there. And then I also usually go on to say not only Jesus was Jewish, but he is Jewish. We do believe he’s still human. The mystery of who Jesus is, is something Christians, we learn about, but we have to still believe that he’s still fully divine and fully human. So if he is, then he’s still male and we believe he’s still Jewish. And then talking about how the good news came out from Israel to all the nations. And this is a framework I do think you have to get used to thinking about when you’re studying the Bible, Israel and the nations. But that is the biblical characters in a sense, the big story characters are Israel and the nations and we are not Israel. We are the nations. So I tell my kids that.

Nic (12:44):
You mean Americans are the nations too?

Tabatha (12:46):
Right. Yeah.

Nic (12:47):
We talk about this sometimes, right? At church sometimes, not just at Gateway, but churches will sing like, “Ask and I’ll give you the nations.” We’re like, “Yeah, we are the nations.”

Tabatha (12:58):
Or the gospel will go out to all the ends of the earth from Jude and Simeria, Jerusalem, and to the ends of the earth. I’m always like, “Yes, we’re at the ends of the earth.” But we usually put ourself in the center and it’s going out from us as Western Christians often and it’s natural, but there’s something to celebrate there that we are kind of at the ends of the earth.

(13:23):
I just like to go back and even look at the New Testament, look at Acts and just say, “Look, when Jesus commissioned all of those Jewish believers in him who were very faithful to their Jewish identity, which Christians don’t always understand, just because we’ve studied the scriptures from an outside perspective and we haven’t always engaged with the help of Jewish people for a Jewish text. So we have interpreted some things that they converted, which we don’t believe here at the center at all. And so when he commissioned them, he was thinking of Abraham here, the promises that your family’s going to be a light to all the nations. And so they went out from that place into the Roman Empire and all those Jewish people went out and yes, they were telling their fellow Jews, but they were also telling non-Jews. They were reaching the nations with the good news.

(14:12):
And here we are today, 2,000 years later, because it has spread from generation to generation. And so I tell my kids, their people told us the good news of Jesus. Their people brought the gospel to us. So we have so much to be thankful for. And so that’s what I mean whenever I say you can start with a story.

Nic (14:33):
Yeah. And also I think in that it’s helping our kids understand that most of the time they’re going to grow up in an environment where they go to a physical location. We obviously attend a mega church. That actually makes this even more challenging because you’re going to naturally develop a pattern of thinking as a young person that Christianity is a few things. One, it’s a spiritual reality that we don’t see or touch or feel Jesus. I mean, we can feel Jesus obviously, but not in a physical sense. So everything becomes spiritualized and then church to us is a place that we go to as a kid. We’re like, “I don’t want to go to church.” We’re like, “Oh, church is more than a building.” And they’re like, “Yeah, but we’re going to a building every Sunday. You’re dragging me there.” That’s

(15:21):
True. I think that’s something that we just have to acknowledge that there’s a development process that has to take place and almost an unwinding because the Bible really is… I remember a Jewish believer told us this one time that the gospel is an individual invitation to join the corporate family of God. And what we don’t realize is that we don’t use family language typically when we talk about the church or Christianity. We actually use more institutional language, organizational language. We became a Christian and we go to church. So we’re reinforcing the idea of an organizational reality, not a family reality. When you read the Bible, God deals with families. The big distinction in the Bible is the family of Israel and then the nations, the family of nations that have multiple different ethnic backgrounds. So that’s a key thing to just remember as you’re starting to lay a foundation for your kids is that there’s a Jewish family and the Bible is really about God’s dealings with them.

(16:21):
Then he invites us to join that corporate family through faith in Jesus by not becoming Jewish, but it is a family reality. So it’s understanding God as a father, like you said, and then it’s understanding that, hey, we’ve inherited things that have come through people, that God worked through people just like he works through us, and then we share the kingdom of God with others. So there’s this family reality that helps ground us in the biblical world. So you talked about this, and I think we’re kind of getting at it now. It’s this thing that lives over here that most Christians can’t see because like a blind spot where we don’t understand the Jewishness of scripture. We read it out of scripture because we just grew up in a system that is… We don’t know any Jewish people, first of all. So it’s old in our heads.

(17:11):
We’re like, that’s the old thing.

Tabatha (17:12):
Especially those of us who live here where we live. Maybe if you live on the East and West Coast, that’s a little different, but there aren’t as many… There’s not as high a percentage of believers in Jesus and Christians on the East and West Coast too. So where you have a lot of Christians in, for example, the United States, you don’t have as big of Jewish populations.

Nic (17:31):
Right. Yeah. And we don’t call God the God of Israel, right? Yeah. And we call it Old Testament and New Testament. And that’s kind of a funny thing to say because you’re like, “It’s old?” Well, you’re kind of implying to our kids even like, “Yeah, that’s old.” So we’re upset that young people don’t read the Old Testament, but then I feel sometimes I’m like, “Well, why would they?” We’re saying it’s old. The

Tabatha (17:57):
Old Testament, you mean?

Nic (17:58):
Yeah. Yeah. We grew up teaching that, that’s the Old Testament. In the New Testament, they’re like, “Ooh, I want the new thing. Forget about the old stuff. I don’t need to learn about that.” And it’s slow moving, historical, lots of confusing names. So let’s talk about this, just the unknown blind spot that we sometimes have, and just to acknowledge that it lives within us, and it’s going to live within the next generation until someone exposes him

Tabatha (18:26):
To it. I believe it’s slowly healing, but it takes generations. And I think that it’s been something that has progressed, unfortunately, for the last 2,000 years. I think the reformation was a turning point, but we’re still all on that journey. I think a return to the high view of God’s word and the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, that’s been a big healing part, because if you have a high view of the Old Testament as God’s word just on the same importance as the New Testament, then you cannot look away and you can’t be as passive as Christians have always been. Well, passive or worse, as Christians have related to Israel and the Jewish people. So we do have a bit of an uphill battle, I think, as Christians, just simply because of either what we’ve been taught or a lot of which we just caught, just things like the mindsets toward them that were fairly avoidant at best, like we said, or worse.

(19:35):
Who knows, maybe we’ve had experiences with people who weren’t friendly toward them. So all that has been passed down to us. But essentially also what’s been passed down to us is just a tradition that puts… So we’ve talked about this with the gospel. It’s a lot like if you look at history as on a stage almost, like a timeline, and you put all different important historical events of how God has interacted with us and shown us what he’s doing, his redemptive plan is unfolding on the earth, Christians in the early first few centuries decided to pull forward a few of those events that they felt like were the main pillars of the gospel story that we would need, and they were all very true and very important. However, it was our perspective and we believe it had some limitations because we weren’t actually partnering with the people, Abraham’s family of the covenant to which we’ve been grafted in.

(20:41):
And if we had have been, there might have been a few things that we made sure not to leave out. And when I say that, I’m talking about like Christians say, and we talk about this all the time on this podcast, creation, the fall, Jesus redemption and restoration at the end of the world. That gospel. Created,

Nic (20:58):
Broken, redeemed, restored.

Tabatha (20:59):
Yes. And it just kind of puts… I’ve heard David Bee say this so much, puts the whole Old Testament just in the sin part of the gospel, he says, just the bad part. But that was kind of a way that we could universalize it and understand it and we framed it. It wasn’t bad. In fact, it’s obviously the truth that we, a foundation, it’s very solid. However, there was some things lost. There were some things lost there, like the particularity of God. For example, which God we’re talking about, not just the God who has sent his divine son Jesus, but this is the same God who made his covenant with Abraham.

Nic (21:40):
So God starts with a family with Abraham and families need a place. Again, these are basic things that sometimes unlock stuff for our kids like, “Hey, God covenants himself to people. People need a place.” That’s another reality of a modern 21st century. It’s like we just pick up and move and place doesn’t matter as much to us, but it does matter to God. Actually, I would say place matters to every person. Where you’re sitting today, if you’re a follower of Jesus, God puts you there for a reason. There’s people in your life that he wants you to influence. So it mattered then, it matters now. So let’s talk about this because it weaves into the land.

Tabatha (22:16):
That’s right. Well, I mean, if place matters, I think also do bodies matter for our spirit and our soul to be in? And it’s not just a discardable shell. It’s something God says he wants to restore. So as Christians, we believe in the resurrection, which the older I get, the more controversial I realize how that belief is, and I’m so glad to believe in it. But if we believe in the resurrection, then that’s that we will be restored to new bodies, but these are actual skin and bone bodies. So if we need a home… Home is a place to fulfill our destiny in a way so that we can connect with God, who is a spiritual being, but who has made a material world that he did it because it’s good. And so if our bodies are made for us to inhabit them, our soul, and to be…

(23:19):
They’re not who we are, but they’re a part of who we are, it’s so that we can glorify him. So it’s the same with land, that God gives us our portion. He gives Israel their home in a land in order so that they can fulfill their destiny to be a blessing and to be at peace with him as well. And he wants that for all. It’s not something that gets canceled. It’s something that actually gets affirmed and then spreads outward because he wants all people and all nations to receive their portion and their inheritance from him as his adopted sons and daughters. Yeah,

Nic (23:59):
Exactly. Yeah. And it matters. Right. I know there’s a lot of nuance in that. We’ll get to that later because we’re starting with the story, the biblical story, how to bring your kids into the story of scripture. It really is the best place to start because it is a story and getting them into that because there’s mystery in story, there’s drama in stories. There’s gray, not black and white in stories. There’s people that fail in stories, people that are redeemed in stories, people that God uses and then they fail and then they get redeemed. Then there’s people that are enemies in stories and good guys in stories, right?

Tabatha (24:32):
Well, in story is, recently learned this from Preston who contributes here, but he said it so well. He said identity is formed in the story. So you really can’t skip over the story and really know who you are even or what’s going on or why the victory at the end is so sweet.

Nic (24:54):
And

Tabatha (24:55):
That’s why I do think Christians, we struggle with that. This is essentially a reason why we struggle with Israel and we do have a bit of a blind spot and we struggle with that sort of maybe avoidance of knowing how to relate to them and then therefore avoidance of them, which isn’t helpful if we love the Bible. But it’s just because when we’ve glossed over those key events, we’ve lost a lot of the story and therefore we have lost in some ways the anchor of their identity and ours in relation to them.

Nic (25:29):
Right. So that ties to what we just said earlier, created, broken, redeemed, restored. So you basically get to Genesis three, then you fast forward to Matthew one. So we’re missing this massive part of the story that tells us actually more about who God is, how God works on the earth with people. And so the story’s important. So let’s jump through that then and go to scripture. What does scripture actually say? And a lot of what scripture says as we try to help our kids understand what the Bible says about Israel and the nations, a lot of that scripture is in between the broken and redeemed.

Tabatha (26:08):
Right. And where the Christian story has sometimes the big… Here’s the thing. We value scripture, but there’s always an interpretation. And so where Christians have interpreted not only scripture, but also after 70 AD, they looked at the Jewish nation and all that happened to them and they went, “Okay.” And they interpreted it a certain way. If God’s judged them like this, then unfortunately they felt as though he must have rejected them. And so that began to shape how they saw the story. But it also then now leaves us here 2,000 years later, when we read scriptures that do affirm Israel’s continued purpose and their continued role in God’s unfolding plan of redemption, and even that we, the nations, would be partnering with Israel because we’re meant to be one in Messiah, they don’t always know how to understand that because we’ve told ourself that their purpose was not ongoing, just really unfortunate and does not reflect well on God’s character as we always talk about here.

(27:12):
I do think it’s just important to go to scripture and just say, “Hey, sometimes we can’t always understand exactly how this works in our day and age when we look at the journey they’re on, the journey we are on, but let’s read this together.”

Nic (27:26):
Let’s read. You want to read the scripture? Yes. You’ve got five scriptures that kind of give an anchor to what the Bible says about Israel and our scriptures that you can help walk your kid through.

Tabatha (27:38):
It was so random. We picked these so quickly because there’s just so many you can go to. I think just going through any book of the Bible, you’ll find, if you have the mindset, you’re going to find help as you talk to your kids. But the first one that comes to mind is one that I love and you should read it. It’s Jeremiah 31:35 through 36.

Nic (28:01):
Yeah. What’s neat about this is a lot of believers understand Jeremiah 31 because this is the scripture that starts talking about the new covenant, the Brita de Shah, because God does, he prophesies that there’s coming a day where I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah, and he did through Jesus. But part of this scripture… So then that’s where sometimes we get into this breaking in our thinking that the old is gone, the new has come, God’s done with Israel, the church is in. But what’s interesting is this way you got to read all of it. You got to read all the scriptures.

Tabatha (28:34):
Yeah, we can’t dice that. Not

Nic (28:35):
Just the ones that your pastor uses for two seconds or that you heard on a podcast because here’s what it says. It says, “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day.” This is Jeremiah 31:33. So he establishes the language of the new covenant, but here’s what it says in verse 35, if you keep reading. “It is the Lord who provides the sun to light the day and the moon and stars to light the night. It is he who stirs the sea into roaring waves. His name is the Lord Almighty, and this is what he says. This is what the Lord says. I am as likely to reject my people Israel as I am to do away with the laws of nature.” That’s pretty powerful. I mean, it’s pretty black and white, right? He’s basically like, “I’m not going to do away.

(29:27):
I’m not going to reject Israel unless literally the laws of nature are rejected.”

Tabatha (29:31):
Right.

Nic (29:31):
So that alone is something

Tabatha (29:33):
You should – Words have meaning to Christians. Mine says, “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then…” So basically saying, “When all this gets canceled, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” If words have meaning, we have to look at what he’s saying there. There’s words there that Israel is not talking about the church because he calls them a nation.

Nic (30:00):
That’s right. She goes on to talk about Jerusalem. Again, the particularity.

Tabatha (30:04):
He’s tricking us here. He’s not tricking Jeremiah and talking about the church.

Nic (30:07):
Yeah. And this is what it says. I think you just read this in a different version. “Just as the heavens cannot be measured and the foundation of the earth cannot be explored, so I will not consider casting them away forever for their sins.” For

Tabatha (30:19):
Their sins.

Nic (30:19):
“I, the Lord have spoken.”

Tabatha (30:21):
And Christians like to say, “But they rejected Jesus, so this must have been like this unforgivable sin.” And I heard that at a birthday party and that’s where the theology that we’ve caught, we don’t even realize has kind of gotten into our mindset. But what does that look like? A father who would reject his children for sins, for rejecting him. “Oh, you rejected me, so I’m rejecting you. “We’ve talked about this before, that’s called punitive supersessionism. And that if we believe that, then we have a wonky view of God as a father. It’s not helpful at all.

Nic (30:58):
So this is a great scripture to just walk through with your kids, especially because you can weave in and just read and say,” Hey, God did promise he would make a new covenant. “But that new covenant didn’t mean he was going to bump somebody out to bring somebody in. It’s what we call here addition theology. Dr. Dan Juster was the one who really helps point that out. And it’s based out of Romans 11, which is what I’ll read some next because this is another key area of scripture that you can read with your kids and you can show them God’s plan was always through Abraham to reach the nations. So he chose one family to reach all families, just like he will put his salvation on one of you and he’ll use you to reach your family or your extended family or your friends in your school or your friends at work.

(31:43):
So God’s always about the particular to reach the universal. And you can read through that in Jeremiah 31, that there’s a new covenant, but then he makes it very clear,” I’m not going to reject Israel so long as there are stars to light the night and sun to light the day.

Tabatha (31:57):
“That’s pretty concrete.

Nic (31:58):
It’s pretty concrete. And then this one’s pretty concrete too because then some of the objections to that can be,” Well, that’s the Old Testament. “That writer, Jeremiah didn’t have the full understanding. Let’s see what the New Testament has to say. Okay, let’s bump over to Romans 11, who Paul, a very, very well-learned student of scripture who knew –

Tabatha (32:18):
I think as Christians, we receive Paul, right?

Nic (32:20):
We do receive Paul. Yeah. Paul’s like the hero, Paul the missionary. And most people don’t realize that Paul remained Jewish through the rest of his life. Literally, you read about it in the book of Acts, the last chapter of the book of Acts, he’s literally in Rome. This is the last picture of Paul’s life. And he is basically arguing with the Jewish leaders to receive Jesus by saying he’s the Jewish Messiah. So here’s what Paul says. I ask then in Romans 11: one, has God rejected his people, the Jewish people? Of course not. Okay, there’s one. Then he goes through this long list and he basically just talks about God’s covenant faithfulness to them. And then he goes, Romans 11:11, did people stumble and fall beyond recovery? This sounds a lot like Jeremiah 31. Of course not. Then he says his purpose was to make his salvation available to the Gentiles and then the Jewish people will be jealous and want it for themselves.

(33:13):
So it’s this family language really where he’s like, “Hey, God’s going to bring Gentiles. He’s going to add them into the story.” And the original family members are going to go, “You can’t sit at that seat at the table. That’s our seat.” Well, you aren’t sitting here. So then God invited me to sit here and then they’re going to go, “I want to sit at the table.” This is kind of the way he’s thinking. So any thoughts on this scripture?

Tabatha (33:35):
No, it’s just so good. I’m just so thankful to be adopted into a family. And I do think a lot about the gospel and the kingdom of God. I think a lot about God and Jesus wanted us to think of his father, the highest, he’s the most high God and he is a father. And I think David says this, he’s a family man. And so we do have to continue to think about it like that. And I think about Romans eight, I’ll just say. And in God’s family, in Romans eight, it talks about being sons and daughters and also heirs. And I never used to know what the distinction was with that until I started to realize that sons and daughters does refer more to who we are. So we’ve been adopted in and we have this essentially status. It’s just beautiful. And we’re at peace with God because of it and he is our father, but also we’re heirs in his family business.

(34:34):
And that’s referring to what he’s called us to do. And so I’m just so thankful for the Holy Spirit because he knits our identity as non-Jews and as the nations into this tree in Romans. We need the Holy Spirit to help when adoption is something you’ve got to get that orphan mindset out of yourself. And not only that, but the nations, this is big picture, but the nations have always struggled with idolatry. And that was something that we see in the Bible that the nations roundabout had all their different gods. And at that time, Israel was like, “Yeah, well who is the one true God?” And then God shows himself to them through Egypt and says, “I am. You have a lot of spiritual powers around you. You can’t see them, but I’m the one who’s the most high God. I’m the one true God, the creator of all of it.” And the nations were still in that bondage to these different powers.

(35:23):
So all that to say, we need the Holy Spirit to help us heal from that identity formation that can come. Even in the New Testament, they were like, “Okay, how did the Gentiles come to believe in Jesus because they’ve had this lifestyle of going to temples and making sacrifices to idols?” So it had to get out of us. And then also we need power by the Holy Spirit to fulfill our role as his heirs and as kingdom ambassadors and to do it in partnership with someone like Israel who’s different. So all that is just a big picture way of saying it’s a beautiful picture that can relate back to the tree picture, but we need the Holy Spirit to help graft us in. And so we can be fruitful.

Nic (36:10):
Yeah. Amen. Well, that bounces into this next scripture that we wanted to share, which is in Ephesians three. So a lot of people know about Ephesians two because Ephesians two: eight is a very common scripture that really talks about we’re saved by faith through grace, not by our works. But Paul is actually, he’s kind of building up into Ephesians three where he’s trying to help the Gentile Ephesian church understand the rooted nature of what they’re being adopted into. And so in Ephesians three, he says basically there’s this secret plan. God reveals it to me. We didn’t know about it long ago,

(36:46):
But basically he’s revealing this mystery to me. And this is what it says. This is the New Living Translation. So it says it a certain way. Ephesians three: six, “This is the secret plan. The Gentiles have an equal share with the Jewish people in all the riches inherited by God’s children.” So we have typically read that, and you can talk this through with your kids, that a lot of Christians read that and say, “Oh, it’s again this idea that we bumped somebody else out, that the Gentiles are in, the Jews are out.” But that’s not what Paul says here. He says, “We have an equal share with them.”

Tabatha (37:22):
Yeah. And then a lot of versions say, “We are heirs together with Israel.” Gentiles are heirs together with Israel. So it’s not an exclusive language or excluding, it’s inclusive.

Nic (37:33):
Yeah. So it says both groups have believed the good news because Paul knew he’s a Jewish believer and there’s all sorts of Jewish believers coming to faith. So both groups, Jews and Gentiles, were believing the good news of Jesus. And now it says they’re part of the same body and enjoy the promise of blessings through Christ Jesus. And then actually to go back to what you’re saying earlier, Tabatha, it goes all the way down and Paul has this great prayer that a lot of Christians know. When I think of the wisdom and the scope of God’s plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father. And then it says this, it says, “I pray that from his glorious unlimited resources,” this is verse 16, “He’ll give you mighty inner strength through this Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ, Yeshua, will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him and may your roots go down deep into the soul of God’s marvelous love.” This is what you just said.

(38:20):
We need the Holy Spirit to help us be fruitful.

Tabatha (38:23):
And to knit us together.

Nic (38:24):
And knit us together. That’s right. And give us identity.

Tabatha (38:27):
I believe that he was overwhelmed because he was seeing this mystery is how we actually fulfill our purpose. It’s together and it will only be together that we finish our race. And I’m saying this in a, I’m talking corporately, Israel and the church, the believers and Jesus and all nations. And the implications of that are things that Christians really care about, like the return of Jesus, the Messiah or world revival. We believe this is key to that. I mean, we’re talking big things here, not just little things.

Nic (39:08):
No, they are big things. It’s very true. Yeah. And this isn’t a main point, but it’s another thing to remind, to ground our kids in the biblical worldview that Jesus will return to earth. He’s coming back to earth.

Tabatha (39:23):
He can put his feet down somewhere. The

Nic (39:25):
Earth that we live on, not the earth that’s like some mythical earth, like Star Trek-y sci-fi, like real earth. And he’s going to put his feet on the ground somewhere. And the Bible says that place is Jerusalem. The same Jerusalem that’s there today, not a different Jerusalem, not Jerusalem, Texas. There’s probably Jerusalem, Texas because there’s Paris, Texas, Rome, Texas. Jerusalem, Israel. And it’s good to be reminded of that, that’s going to happen. We are part of this grand story and us as believers in Jesus that have attached ourselves to his kingdom, we are sharing with the Jewish people in that reality that when he comes back to establish his kingdom, we’re in it with them. Not all of us and not them, but with them. All right. So we’re going to do one more scripture, then we’re going to get into some –

Tabatha (40:14):
Yeah, this scripture is a good connection point.

Nic (40:16):
Yeah, which will bounce us into some of the last part that we’re going to walk through here as we finish, which is the practicality of the loadedness of this issue that you’re going to have to navigate through with terms and ideologies.

Tabatha (40:28):
And it is probably, I think it’s important or I believe it’s important and I think you can do it in age appropriate ways to tell your kids that in their day and age today, there’s a lot of conversation about Israel and Jewish people. And it’s important for Christians to be their friends and we believe partners, we were just talking about. So even at a young age, you can share with them there’s a lot of people who have biases, prejudices or hatefulness toward Israel as a nation or just Jewish people in general.

(41:07):
It’s really people and it’s a people hood. So right now people are saying it’s okay to be a Jew, but it’s not okay to have Jewish peoplehood. You know what I’m saying? But it doesn’t connect. That’s actually telling someone they can’t be who they are essentially. So it’s like you’re okay to be a Jewish individual. We’re not antisemitic. We’re just anti-Zionist. Every people group cannot inevitably be a group of people with a community. And also then they are a nation and they need a government. And so all of that, it’s very nuanced and we can talk about it, but it’s helpful just to share with your kids, for example, the scripture, you want me to read it?

Nic (41:51):
Yeah, go for it.

Tabatha (41:52):
Even now, it’s from Psalm 83: 2-5. “Even now your enemies are in tumult. “This is talking to the Lord. “Those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people. They consult together against those you protect. They say, Come, let us wipe them out as a nation. Let the name of Israel be remembered no more.” And so just to go ahead and I believe it’s important to tell our kids today’s attacks on Israel and the Jewish people, they are an ancient pattern and it’s actually, they’re using some of the same language even today. Yeah,

Nic (42:29):
It’s true.

Tabatha (42:30):
And we need to be aware that there’s a spiritual element to this and that an attack on these people is a real sign that God’s not finished with them and that God is still their God. You know what I’m saying? Because recently someone told me, they were like, “I don’t think Jewish people worship the same God as they did in Old Testament.” I’m like, “No, he has not pulled a switcheroo on them.” No, they still worship the same God, the God of Abraham. They still worship the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Nic (42:59):
Yeah, it’s true. That was such a good point. Sorry everybody. No, but it is a good point. We’ve

Tabatha (43:05):
Said that. Do you need me to start over anywhere or

Nic (43:06):
Whatever? No, we’re good. We’re going to keep rolling. This is a real behind the scenes podcast today. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That’s true. You and I don’t know any other way. We’ll argue in front of people.

Tabatha (43:18):
It doesn’t matter. Thousands of years ago, they’re using the same language and yet here we

Nic (43:22):
Are again. We’ve said this here many times, and I think this is a helpful construct when you talk to your kids to say it this way, whatever God chooses, the adversary of God who the Bible says is Satan, he will hate it because if it matters to God, he will go after it. David has said this before, you see movies about this, right? People who go after people’s kids to hold them ransom because the most important thing to you, the power of darkness will go attack it. So why is there this history of antisemitism, of violent hatred against Jewish people? And then why is there just tension and hatred over the land? Because God chose both of them. He basically says, “I put my name on a people.” That’s what he told Abraham. “I’m going to put my name on you. “And then he tells the Jewish people like,” Everywhere you went, you defamed my name.

(44:10):
“Which

Tabatha (44:10):
Is attaching his reputation to them. He’s

Nic (44:12):
Put his reputation on them. That’s

Tabatha (44:13):
What it means to put your name on them. So as they go, so goes the main witness to him, the most outstanding witness to is he really faithful? Is he really powerful? Is he really God or not? Is he the Mosai or not?

Nic (44:27):
Yeah. So he puts his name on a people and then he puts his name on a place. It says it in Isaiah 49. God is going to put his name on Jerusalem. And you and I both know, if you look at it geographically, literally the Hebrew etymological letter for his name, Shem, is literally stamped in the geography of Israel.

Tabatha (44:44):
That’s neat. So cool. So

Nic (44:47):
The enemy’s going to attack his people and his place. And whether we like it or not, as followers of Jesus, that we will be a residual target of attack too, because we are putting our hope in the name of the God of Israel, and we’re actually putting our faith in a Jewish Messiah. So at the very end of days…

Tabatha (45:08):
Well, I think today we’re seeing a lot of antisemitism, but I would think that the de-legitimization and the attacks, I don’t know how much time it would take for it to come toward Christians as well if they won’t just somehow join in. You know what I mean? It’s probably very likely. I think it’s probably the pattern. So we just have to take that as kind of a sober though, but it’s important. It just proves the point.

Nic (45:34):
That’s true. Okay. We’re going to wind this down by getting really practical because –

Tabatha (45:37):
You go through it because you’re more of an expert on this than I am.

Nic (45:41):
Oh, okay. Well, words create worlds and words matter. And a lot of what is argued about today in culture wars is just language. It’s buzzwords, it’s trigger words, and it’s all very real. So words like Zion, Israel, Jews, all of these are buzzwords that are created by people who have an agenda against

Tabatha (46:03):
God. Or they can be. Those are solid words themselves, but they will

Nic (46:06):
Take them. They’re used negatively like you’re a Zionist. Oh, are you a Zionist? And so that’s something –

Tabatha (46:10):
It takes on a whole different meaning.

Nic (46:12):
Yeah. That’s something that your kids are going to ask maybe. Are we Zionists, mom and dad? Because people are going through my school looking for Zionists.

Tabatha (46:22):
Yeah. People literally believe Zionism is the source of all evil or something. I mean, it has gotten really bad.

Nic (46:28):
And Zionism is just basically this.

Tabatha (46:30):
Oh, it’s very basic. It

Nic (46:30):
Is a biblical term that essentially means it is about the return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland, which is in Israel. So if you’re a Zionist, what that really just means at base level is that you believe the Jewish people have a place in a land and that land is Israel. And the Bible calls

Tabatha (46:47):
It – You can be a Jew here.

Nic (46:48):
Yeah. Right. You can be a Jew there. Yeah.

Tabatha (46:50):
And Zion is the biblical name for Jerusalem and sometimes refers to the land of Israel, but a lot of times it just refers to Jerusalem, the capital.

Nic (46:58):
Yeah. So then we have Israel. So Israel has multiple meanings. In the scripture, God renames Jacob Israel, which just means wrestles with God. So you have Israel the people, but then you have a modern ethnoreligious national reality called Israel the nation state. And the Bible, there was the people of Israel, but it really was, in David’s time, it was a national reality. But for the most part, in Jesus’ time, it was the people of Judah. It was the region of Judea. And so in 1948 – And it

Tabatha (47:34):
Kind of shrunk down to that.

Nic (47:35):
Yeah. In 1948, it was reestablished as the state of Israel. And so you have Israel the people, you have Israel the land, and that’s really what that means.

Tabatha (47:45):
Yeah, it’s a person.

Nic (47:46):
It’s a person.

Tabatha (47:47):
It’s a people. Yeah. And it’s a land.

Nic (47:49):
Yeah. So the land needs a people and the people need a land, right? It’s pretty basic. So this is the modern state. Now, here’s one that needs some clarification, and that is Israel is also a modern national entity. So you have a land of Israel where Jewish people live and have lived since 1948, since they reestablished a state, but then you also have the government of Israel. So there’s a difference between the two. There’s America, then there’s the American government. This isn’t really that hard, but for some reason with Israel, people who are antagonistic towards, they like to merge the two together and create one thing. But we wouldn’t do that here. I would say I’m an American and I love America. I don’t love my government. Always. I don’t love the American government.

Tabatha (48:39):
Well, yeah. Sometimes we’re very pleased. Sometimes we’re not, but we know how to differentiate.

Nic (48:43):
Yeah. I don’t love my government. Sorry. I’m never going to love the government. Just won’t. I’m not going to lay down next to the government at night. I won’t do that. But it’s the same thing in Israel. What people don’t realize is that the people of Israel who live there today, the citizens of that state, they argue passionately about what their government does and doesn’t do.

Tabatha (49:03):
Oh yeah.

Nic (49:04):
It is not fifty fifty even. It is like on certain issues, what the state of Israel does in the West Bank region, what the state of Israel does in wars, what the state of Israel does in its own national policies. There’s a lot of difference of opinion there.

Tabatha (49:21):
Right. It’s a very diverse people, just like America, just like any other nation. And then the government is representing those people, but there’s a relationship there that is sometimes strained, sometimes good. Sometimes the government represents more or less. And right now the government represents a certain particular kind of stream of their politics, kind of more right wing. And there’s a relationship there. They can’t have one without the other. People can’t be expected to survive without a government. So we can’t condemn the nation simply because they have a government who’s making decisions that might be good or bad. So there’s that nuance there.

Nic (50:02):
And not to mention, Romans 15 talks about this. Paul talks about government. Government’s used by God. So it’s just interesting because we’ll make that tolerance sometimes as Christians in America, but then when it comes to Israel, for whatever reason, we excuse any tolerances. And you made a great point that the government of Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu or even his party. They’re the current coalition leaders, but there’s a lot of people that have a lot of opinions in Israel about that. And we know a lot of believers in Jesus that are not big fans of Bibi Netanyahu. So again, for a lot of Christians who love Israel, what you’ll hear and what your kids are going to hear is, oh, so you’re a BB. There’s a term for this, right?

Tabatha (50:46):
I don’t even know.

Nic (50:47):
There’s a lot of language. You’re a B lover and they collapse everything into Bibi. Again, if you’re an American, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are everything that America represents is Donald Trump and vice versa. We have to hold the nuances of this. Yes. And that’s why it’s such a complicated topic.

Tabatha (51:03):
Yeah. And you have to as questions about what you’re being told.

Nic (51:05):
That’s right. So Christian Zionism, we’re just going through some terms. That’s just us as followers of Jesus basically affirming the fact that the Jewish people have an ancient homeland in the land of Israel where it currently is today. We’re not arguing about the outlines of the country and whether or not they should have full sovereignty in every little corner of the area of land. That’s a political conversation. What we’re saying is we believe that Jewish people have a right to an ancient homeland that the Bible talks about. They have a right to safety in that land, and they have a right to make up their own minds on what they want to do in that land. At the end of the day, whether we can tell them that’s not a very good idea, but what we believe is they should be able to determine how they live their life as Jewish people.

(51:52):
Just like I don’t go wagging my finger at how French people live. Good.

Tabatha (51:56):
I’m glad.

Nic (51:56):
I mean, Sam and I have had conversations about this. Sam is a French guy on our team.

Tabatha (52:00):
Yeah. No, it’s good. And there is a spectrum within even people who would call themselves Christian Zionists too. And even our view is very nuanced too as well. And that’s something we encourage you, anyone, to check out our videos and continue to learn because we feel like our perspective’s really unique even within the Christian Zionism camp.

Nic (52:20):
That’s true. Yeah. And I would say in one of the

Tabatha (52:23):
Recent podcasts

Nic (52:24):
That David and I did actually, we talk a little bit about that, how we felt to set the Center for Israel up and the distinctive values of the Center for Israel as in a bit of a different flavor of Christian Zionism. So not that we’re judging Christian Zionism, but just that we feel like there were some things left wanting. All right, we’re wrapping up.

Tabatha (52:43):
What do we

Nic (52:43):
Want to say?

Tabatha (52:44):
I think just thinking about if there were any parents or grandparents listening, I would just encourage them. My daughter said something really wise the other day because she was talking with a friend and he’s listening to voices online that are truly antisemitic and actually pretty irrational. Just these ideas and claims that you would never even be able to… I mean, it’s not about the rationality of it all, and we can talk about that later. But she just decided, you know what though? If my friend loves Jesus, then he’s on a journey here. And there’s always hope. When someone’s following Jesus, if they continue to seek him and receive him how he’s presented himself, then it will begin to help them through this day and age where all these ideas are flying around to a place where they hopefully do not take on antisemitic views. And then not only do they not take on an aggressive or arrogant view of Israel, but then on the flip side, there’s the opportunity to relate in love and in honor and in humility.

(53:54):
And these are our prayers for our kids, but just also just how important prayer is. I pray all the time before I have conversations and the Holy Spirit and God’s word will help us through these tricky conversations, whatever the topic.

Nic (54:09):
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. I think in summary, my brain is just alliterating. I can’t help it, but you want to be caring in the conversation. You want it to be a conversation with your kids, not you telling them things. So you want it to be conversational, you want it to be caring, you want to be curious.

Tabatha (54:27):
That’s good.

Nic (54:28):
The more curious you can be as a parent, man, what do you think about that? Your friend said that, man, what do you think? Where is this unclear to you? Or I’m going to read you a scripture. Tell me what comes up inside you when I read this. Do you feel like, oh, that’s fundamentalist dad? Let’s just be curious about it. And then I think we want to be committed to the word of God. At the end of the day, we’re going to have to just be able to tell our kids, look, some things in the Bible, we’re going to fall back on the word of God every day of the week. And it might not make sense to the kids in your class. It might not even be something that you can rationalize, but it’s the word of God and it’s true.

Tabatha (55:08):
Sometimes things don’t make sense until we act upon them too.

Nic (55:10):
That’s true.

Tabatha (55:11):
Yeah. So it’s so good.

Nic (55:13):
Exactly. And I think it’s just good to realize that there’s a lot environmentally happening that’s clear to us that’s unclear to them because we’ve had a lot of time to think. This morning when we dropped our daughter off at school, there’s this whole thing with homecoming, da, da, da, da. So a guy asked her to homecoming. It’s a really big deal. And then Tabatha was telling me on the way, she’s like, she just didn’t seem to be processing it.

Tabatha (55:37):
Able to process it. She just kind of shut down. She’s like, “I need a moment to think. I can’t think with you two though.”

Nic (55:42):
But I told her, I was like, “Yeah, but the mom texted you last night before we went to bed that her son was going to ask. So we’ve been thinking about it for 12 hours, right? And sometimes we have to realize that as parents. We live saturated with a reality or a perspective that our kids are coming into for the first time. That’s the point of being patient, being caring, and being curious in the conversation is just to realize, hey, we’re going to help build for them a biblical worldview that’s rooted in scripture, but that deals with the nuance. And I think it’s good for parents to even say, I don’t know the answer to that. I want to find out. Let’s find out together. Let’s go watch some stuff or let’s learn some stuff or let’s invite our small group and teach us all.

Tabatha (56:19):
Oh, thanks.

Nic (56:20):
Right?

Tabatha (56:21):
That’s nice.

Nic (56:21):
You could do that. We can put you on the road. If you want to have Tabatha come and speak to your small group, write into [email protected]. She’s ready to get on a plane and come and see you and walk you through all of this. So

Tabatha (56:33):
You

Nic (56:33):
Did a great job.

Tabatha (56:34):
Oh, thanks.

Nic (56:34):
Anything else you want to add?

Tabatha (56:36):
I don’t think so.

Nic (56:37):
Okay.

Tabatha (56:38):
You wrapped it up well.

Nic (56:39):
You want to pray for everybody?

Tabatha (56:40):
Sure. I’d be happy to. For

Nic (56:41):
Parents who are going to have conversations with their kids.

Tabatha (56:43):
Oh yeah, for sure. Because I do. Well, thank you. Thank you, Lord, for this time. And I do pray for every person listening. I mean, we’ve already prayed for them and we have them on our minds. We want to be helpful today, so we pray that it has. And we also pray that you would just encourage them that they would not feel overwhelmed, but they would just feel like they can take steps because a lot of this really does connect back to just the challenges of parenting overall. So we do pray that you would be with them, you would speak to them, remind them of your presence, help them, and that you would bless their relationship with their kids and they would have really fruitful conversations, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Nic (57:25):
Amen. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in. If this was helpful, please let us know. We always love hearing back from you or if there’s questions that you feel like we could have covered and we didn’t, put it in the comments. Send us an email, [email protected]. We really love to hear from you. And let us know if you have a conversation with your kids about this and how it goes or if there’s any additional resources that we can help you in as you have those conversations. But we love you. We bless you. We’ll see you next time on the Covenant Conflict Podcast.