I grew up in a solidly biblical church, so from my earliest days I remember some things I learned from the Bible.   Jesus was and is the Center of it all, and the Bible, God’s Word, gives us the record from the beginning of the world to the end.  Very near the beginning of that record, just a few chapters into Genesis, I met Abraham.  Not only in the inspiring events of his life recorded in Genesis did I grow to admire Abraham, but as I grew in my biblical knowledge, so did he.  Paul would use that old man from Mesopotamia as the ultimate model of faith in Romans 4.   And virtually all the Old Testament is the story of Abraham’s extended family – the Israelites.

In the New Testament, Abraham shows up again in the very first verse as the patriarch of Jesus.  We can’t even start to read about angels and Joseph (and, in Luke’s Gospel, Mary) until we plow through the Israelite ancestry of the Messiah.

I wasn’t very far along in my biblical learning before I also spent time in the last book of the Bible, the Revelation.  The descendants of Abraham, by tribes sorted out among his grandchildren, are mighty witnesses in Revelation 7.  Then, right at the back threshold of Scripture in Revelation 21, the 12 gates of the new Jerusalem are inscribed with the names of Israel’s twelve tribes.  You really can’t see that as anything other than an eternal tribute to the great man, Abraham, himself, and the covenant his God made with him.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to acknowledge that the most clear preservation of Abraham’s decendants are the sons of Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David…the Jewish people.  You also don’t have to be a particularly keen student of history to see the violent opposition that the people of “Israel” faced in the days of the Patriarchs nearly 4,000 years ago, all that violent opposition has carried on down through the centuries, right up to this very hour.

God cut a deal with Abraham.  God made a covenant on His terms.  Any curious person can read it in Genesis 12 and you won’t need to call your lawyer, or your favorite theologian, to figure it out.  God loves every person, but He has a specific covenant with exactly ONE people group – the Jewish people.  There are challenges aplenty and a good many questions we cannot answer as clearly as we would like.  But cover to cover our Bible – both Old and New Testaments – tell us not only of the Redemptive plan of the Lord, but also of His covenantal, eternal relationship with Abraham and his family.

If God has such a special relationship with the Jewish people, why does it seem like almost the whole world is turning on them?   Despite the unimaginable atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Anti-Semitism has skyrocketed and is raging!  It’s a hatred that is ancient, but we had to hope that Nazi-esque Jew hate was a topic in the historic books.  Unfortunatetly, it again a topic for the headlines.

The issue of the Jewish people, the State of Israel, the politics, the needs of the Arab peoples – those are all important and complicated topics with no simple solutions.  But Anti-Semitism is not complicated.  It’s evil.  One of the great evils of our day.  We are somewhere between that calling of Abram in Genesis 12 and the construction of those gates in Revelation 21.  In the meantime, per the covenant our God drew up Himself, we better remember who to “bless” and not “curse.”