By Freeman G. Chambers
The first five books of the Bible, collectively known as the Torah, are more than 3400 years old. In these books Moses recorded laws and events, some events which he personally experienced, and some events which happened long before he was born. In addition, Moses recorded his personal interaction with his God, which God identified Himself to Moses, on Moses’s first encounter with God, as the God of Moses’s fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
The Torah was given for everyone
Since Moses was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and continuing on through Jacob’s son Levi, it follows that Moses was a Hebrew. The information written in the Torah was given to the Hebrews for them to protect and to practice those things written therein. However, it was not written for the Hebrews only, but for all humanity.
The Hebrews were to be a guide to the nations, to lead all humanity to the truth about our existence and to the One who created us.
Why to all humanity and not just the descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob alone? Because in the first book of Moses known as Bereshit in Hebrew, and Genesis in English, God had Moses record how humans physically came into being, how our troubles began and why we all must die.
The Hebrews or Jews are still here in the present to explain the beginning and so much more. They are here despite many repeated attempts by every major power from ancient times, right up to the present day, to deny them existence. Even when removed from their homeland on more than one occasion they survived to bear witness to the beginning of all things.
The testimony of the enduring people of Israel
Did the Jews survive by their own power? Do they exist today by their own will? The answer is a resounding no. How could a small group of people survive the brutality of great empires like Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, then in 539 BC the Meads and the Persians conquer the Babylonians, taking possession of the peoples formerly held captive by the Babylonians, namely the Jews? How could they withstand the Assyrians, the Syrians, and not get absorbed by the Greeks, or become a distant memory under the crushing iron teeth of the Roman Empire? Dispersed through the nations, hated by those they lived near, laws made to keep them from prospering, owning, or just continuing to be, as in the case of the events surrounding the holocaust, the Hebrews of ancient times are still here with us to testify to the truth.
In the face of more than 3000 years of life by fire, the Jewish people are still here protecting the truth and bearing witness to a force, to a powerful presence, and a guiding hand greater than human will and effort that is protecting the Jewish people, and in so doing declares a promise to all of us which was written in the first book of Moses, where we are told that the God of Abraham said to him that all nations would be blessed through the seed of Abraham. Not seeds, but seed.
A promise for all peoples
In the first book that Moses wrote in the 22nd chapter, verses 6-18, we read:
Then Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on Isaac his son. In his hand he took the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.
Then Isaac said to Abraham his father, “My father?”
Then he said, “Here I am, my son.”
He said, “Look. Here’s the fire and the wood. But where’s the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself a lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
The two of them walked on together. Then they came to the place about which God had told him, and Abraham built the altar there, laid out the wood, bound up Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of Adonai called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham! Abraham!”
He said, “Hineni!”
Then He said, “Do not reach out your hand against the young man—do nothing to him at all. For now I know that you are one who fears God—you did not withhold your son, your only son, from Me.”
Then Abraham lifted up his eyes and behold, there was a ram, just caught in the thick bushes by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. Abraham named that place, Adonai Yireh,—as it is said today, “On the mountain, Adonai will provide.”
The angel of Adonai called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I swear—it is a declaration of Adonai—because you have done this thing, and you did not withhold your son, your only son, I will richly bless you and bountifully multiply your seed like the stars of heaven, and like the sand that is on the seashore, and your seed will possess the gate of his enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed—because you obeyed My voice.”
This promise made to Abraham was made to him by his God, and his God swore by himself that He would do these things; things that we in 2018 can look back and see have come to pass.
So no matter what comes against the house of Israel, the God of Abraham will make good on His word. We in our time are all witnesses to the fulfillment of the words written more than 3400 years ago. But if you cannot see it, then my question to you is, why can you not see it? Will you argue that it has been luck or chance on the part of the people of Israel, or maybe it was just pure stubborn determination that kept them throughout all of the past centuries to the present day? No. There is a force outside of the Jewish people that is preserving them and in so doing preserves the truth given to them to protect for all of us.
What truth?
You just read it, the passage regarding Abraham who was fully ready to sacrifice his son Isaac, and by the way not just a son, but a son of a promise made to Abraham and his wife Sarah by his God. Let me say it again. Abraham’s God promised him a son. Abraham’s first son Ishmael was not the son of a promise since he was not delivered from Sarah‘s womb. The son of promise, Isaac, came about by a miracle, for we are told that Sarah was long past her child conceiving days and it was God, by His sovereign power, which brought Isaac into the world.
Now, notice the detail in the passage regarding Abraham offering up his son of promise, Isaac, as a burnt sacrifice. Take note that Isaac was “carrying the wood”, which his father placed on him, the wood that Isaac was eventually placed on by his father Abraham.
Let’s look at verse 6 again:
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the knife.
Notice also that Abraham is “carrying the knife and the fire” that will be used to execute judgment, while his son of promise is lying on the wood.
Have you ever asked yourself why do we need this level of detail? Why do we need to know who is carrying specific items? How does knowing that Isaac was carrying the wood and that his father was carrying the knife and fire add to the narrative with respect to truth?
The answer to those questions is that truth is stored in this event in the life of Abraham and Isaac, truth that has been protected for nearly four millennia by the Jewish people. Abraham’s God directed Moses, hundreds of years after Abraham’s time, to record the specifics of Isaac, the son of promise, carrying the wood that was placed on him, and that he, Isaac, was eventually placed upon to be sacrificed.
The reason it is recorded is that the God of Israel is prophetically showing all of us that the seed of a woman, by virtue of a miracle and a promise, who would be a descendant of Abraham, would one day be carrying a burden of “wood”, that this descendant would be sacrificed on, and that this Son of promise would have judgment executed upon Him by the God of Israel His Father, just as Abraham, a father, carried the knife and the fire to execute judgment upon his only son of promise.
Yeshua is the Son of promise
Yeshua, the Son of promise to Israel first and then to the nations, who by miraculous conception, born of a woman who had no sexual activity with a man prior to His birth, who grew up to be a man who carried the burden of a wooden Roman cross, and who was placed on it where His Father, the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, executed judgment upon Him for the sins of us all.
The God of Israel in the first book of Moses has over and over again made the point, using the lives of Hebrew individuals, showing prophetically that He, the Father and Creator of us all, that He would send His Son, which He promised, to save us from our sins, to deliver us from death, and to give us eternal life to all who will believe in Him.
Yeshua told a Samaritan woman the following:
Yeshua tells her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming—it is here now—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people as His worshipers. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)
Yeshua, the Son of promise, told the woman that salvation is from the Jews. Israel was given the difficult task, by God, to carry the light of truth to the world and that through the seed of Abraham all nations are now blessed.
Yeshua, is the salvation of Israel and all who will believe in His death, burial and resurrection. He is the fulfillment of the law, given to Israel, and the prophets born of Israel.
Israel’s Connection to the Son of Promise, Yeshua, is eternal. No amount of denial will ever change that. Call on Yeshua, He loves you, and He lives.
Hear O Israel, the Lord is Yeshua the Son of promise.
