Some Christians Say, “We Are Not Obligated To Support Israel”

To say as some do, that “the modern state of Israel is not the Israel of the Bible” is an outright lie. Israel’s obedience or disobedience to God has never established or disestablished Israel’s identity, any more than my daughter’s obedience or disobedience to me could establish or disestablish her identity. She remains, my daughter.

​The pseudo-Christian stance against Israel is at its heart, a spiritual delusion. 
 
Those who hold the position that God has done away with Israel and that the "Church" has replaced, superseded, succeeded her, or the like, are under a satanic anti-biblical delusion that cannot be defeated by intellectual arguments alone. 
 
Knowing this is important because while there is a place for presenting the truth of Scripture to those who are bound, without revelation there is nothing further we can do but pray that they receive the real Jesus by the revelation of the Holy Spirit and choose to humbly repent. 
 
The reason I say this prior to giving the reader some direction regarding what Scripture teaches about God's continued redemptive purposes in Israel (ethnic, chosen, religious, empirical), is that I have spent many years trying to convince the unteachable-deluded by presenting reasonable arguments based on the right division of the Word of Truth. The problem with this approach is that it presumes that all are equally capable of receiving and accepting the truth. This is simply not the case. A wilfully unteachable person by definition cannot be taught.
 
I’ve learned in Messiah to discern between the teachable-deluded and the unteachable-deluded. A few years ago the LORD challenged me to stop wasting time on the unteachable, because, the time I was spending trying to convince them of what they had already firmly decided against, was time I was stealing from the teachable-deluded.
  
What Scripture Teaches Regarding Israel
 
This will not be exhaustive but will be a good starting point.
 
NOTE: the use of decontextualized verses as foundation for doctrine is ERROR. When you see others responding to you with lists of single verses, devoid of an admonishment to consider context [textual, historical, religious, cultural, linguistic etc.] you can instantly determine that they are in error.
 
Discernment is key. Godly discernment is necessary. Lean into the LORD, and not on your own understanding.
 
The question we are addressing is "Are Christians obligated to support Israel?" (In fact, the better question is "What does Scripture teach us about God's relationship with Israel?")
 
I prefer, “How is Messiah the Goal of this?” And, "How is Jesus in me directing me in relationship toward His blood relatives?" 
 
There is no obligation in Rest (Messiah). If we are not in intimate relationship with Jesus we do not have the capability of understanding how offensive the rejection of His blood brothers and sisters ethnic, religious Israel, the Jewish people, is to Him.
 
He considers those who reject Israel and position themselves as Israel's enemies to be "dogs", His words. Please read my article on sanitizing the words of Jesus:
 
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/sanitizing-the-words-of-jesus-matthew-15-mark-7
 
The nouns Jacob, Israel, Jew etc. are all ethnic nouns describing the descendants of Jacob. They are not once used in all of Scripture outside of this primary definition. These nouns are no different in usage than Navajo, Mohican, Maori, Cree, Celt etc.
 
"I ask then, “Did God (the God of Israel) reject His people (Israel)?” A curse on it! For I myself am an Israelite (empirical, ethnic, spiritual), from the seed of Avraham, of the tribe of Benyamin. God has not rejected His people, whom He foreknew. (From before the foundation of the world. 1 Kefa/Peter 1:20)" Or don’t you know what the Tanakh (OT) says about Eliyahu (Elijah)? He pleads with God against Israel, “HaShem (YHVH), they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I’m the only one left, and now they want to kill me too!” But what is God’s answer to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not knelt down to the Ba‘aliym (lords, false gods).” (1 Kings 19) It’s the same way in the present age: there is a remnant, chosen by chesed (grace, practical love).”
  
-Romans 11:1-5
 
Has God rejected Israel?
 
The Scripture says "A curse on the idea!" [Rom. 11:1]
 
Therefore, there is a curse on the one who says that Christians are not obligated to support the people of Israel. [Asking a question of obligation is proof of bondage, not freedom.]
 
The phrase in Romans 11:1 "A curse on it!" is an attempt English translators to convey the Biblical Greek text which reads literally as "May it be as if the idea never existed", which is equivalent to "Y'mach zot!", may it be blotted out!
 
Please read my commentary on Romans 11:
 
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/romans-11-ethnic-spiritual-israel-are-one-in-the-same
 
Does the land of Israel still belong to the Jews?
 
Today 9.5 million people live in Israel, 7.2 million of them Jews (proven descendants of the Jacob of the Bible). There are approximately 15.8 million Jews in the world today. Almost half of us live in the God covenanted land which has been given to our people without caveat. [Gen. 15; 1 Chronicles 16:12-18]
 
Here's what the Bible says about the covenant God made for the land. 
 
Keep in mind that this covenant was made first with Abram while he was unconscious and is therefore incumbent on God alone. Meaning that Israel's disobedience does not nullify the covenant promise of God concerning the land. This covenant was passed on to Isaac and Jacob, Jacob and his descendants being the rightful possessors of the covenant land of Israel. God is essentially the first Zionist. [note that Zionist and Jew are synonyms, given that approximately 80% of all Jews consider themselves to be Zionists]
 
"12 Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done,
His marvels and the judgments from His mouth,
13 You descendants of Israel His servant,
Sons of Jacob, His chosen ones!
14 He is the Lord our God;
His judgments are in all the earth.
15 Remember His covenant forever,
The word which He commanded to a thousand generations,
16 The covenant which He made with Abraham,
And His oath to Isaac.
17 He also confirmed it to Jacob as a statute,
To Israel as an everlasting covenant,
18 Saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan,
 
-1 Chronicles 16:12-18 NASB
 
Please read my commentary on the covenant for the land made with Abram:
 
https://www.bethmelekh.com/genesis-148915121488151314971514/-genesis-chapter-15
 
Is Israel established as God's chosen people forever?
 
The previous quote from 1 Chronicles says they are, because the land promised is given as a dwelling place for the chosen Jewish people. This requires their continued existence, which has been established by God, Who is without beginning or end.
 
*Please read each of the following references in context (read the entire chapter and previous and following text. Also consider the historical, religious, cultural, locational context):
 
Genesis 27:29*
Exodus 19:6*
Numbers 24:9*
Deuteronomy 7:6-8*
Isaiah 41:8-9; 44:1; 49:14-26*
Jeremiah 31:31-40; 51:5*
Psalms 105:9-12; 135:4*
Matthew 10:5-7; 15:21-28*
John 4:22*
Romans 1:16; 10:1; 11:1-2, 24-27*
Revelation 7*
 
The list goes on, and on, and on…
 
The meta-narrative of God's word is irrefutable proof of His continued and everlasting relationship with the ethnic descendants of Jacob, Israel, the Jewish people.
 
God warns all humanity against cursing His chosen people in His promise to Abram which is ratified in Isaac and Jacob (Israel):
 
"May nations serve you, and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed.” After Isaac finished blessing him, and Jacob (Israel) had scarcely left his father’s presence, his brother Esau came in from hunting."
 
- Genesis 27:29-30 [ref. Gen. 12:3]
 
“God brought them out of Egypt;
    they have the strength of a wild ox.
They devour hostile nations
    and break their bones in pieces;
    with their arrows they pierce them.
9 Like a lion they crouch and lie down,
    like a lioness—who dares to rouse them?
“May those who bless you be blessed
    and those who curse you be cursed!”
 
-Numbers 24:8-9 [Read the entire chapter]
 
There is a God established curse on those who fail to bless Israel. The title "Christian" will not save so-called "Christians" from that curse. If there is an obligation that we have, it's an obligation to warn those so-called "Christians" of the grave danger they have placed themselves in.
 
Some say, “the modern state of Israel is not the Israel of the Bible”
 
Sadly, by far the majority of the current world "Church" is cursed according to Scripture. This, simply based on pseudo-Christian replacement theology and a political disdain for the state of Israel which comprises almost half the world’s Jewish population.
 
To say as some do, that “the modern state of Israel is not the Israel of the Bible” is an outright lie. Israel’s obedience or disobedience to God has never established or disestablished Israel’s identity, any more than my daughter’s obedience or disobedience to me could establish or disestablish her identity. She remains, my daughter [Of course, I have four daughters, and many more spiritual daughters besides. But you understand the analogy.]
 
God’s Word cannot be broken. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. As Paul writes:
 
"I ask then, “Did God (the God of Israel) reject His people (Israel)?” A curse on it! For I myself am an Israelite (empirical, ethnic, spiritual), from the seed of Avraham, of the tribe of Benyamin. God has not rejected His people, whom He foreknew.”
 
-Romans 11:1
 
Refuting the Misuse of Scripture Regarding Israel:
 
Now let me address some of the decontextualized scriptures promoted by those arguing to the contrary and expose the ignorance and misappropriation of each verse (singular) in question:

1.      1 Peter 2:9

 
Please bear with me, if this weren’t such a satanic misuse of Scripture I would be wetting my pants laughing at the presenting of it as proof that the “Church” has replaced Israel.
 
Peter is tasked as an apostle (shaliach) [sent one] to the Jews. [Galatians 2:8]
 
Peter’s letters are, like the letter of Yaakov (James), written to the “Israel of God” (Jewish followers of Yeshua), and not to Gentile believers, though, if understood in context, the principles within the text are applicable to all believers, but not as evidence of the Church replacing the people (Jews) to whom the letters were written.
 
1 Peter 2:9 is a reminder to the Jewish believers of their God appointed identity as recorded in Exodus 19:6, which Peter is quoting. This is not written to Gentile believers.
 
All believers are priests in Messiah [Rev. 1:6; 5:8-10], but this is not established in the context of Peter’s letter. Nor does it negate God’s established choosing of the ethnic descendants of Jacob (Israel) as a nation of priests. It is not a question of us or them but of them and us, if we submit to their King and their nationhood…
 
Ref. Exodus 19:6; Numbers 24:8-9; Isaiah 61:6 etc.
 
Please read my article explaining what it means to be made part of the commonwealth of Israel:
 
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/correctly-understanding-romans-11-ephesians-2-supplementary
 
Please also refer back to my commentary on Romans 11 [earlier link]

1.      Romans 1:17

 
I’m at a loss to understand the attempted use of this verse to support the idea that the “Church” has replaced Israel?
 
It is in fact an indictment against those who make the claim that they have replaced Israel.
 
If they were living by faith (as the text requires,) Messiah, the giver of pisteos [Greek] aman [Hebrew] both words meaning: faith, trust, persuaded by, convinced of, in agreement], would be compelling them to advocate for His people. If they’re not doing so they are not living by faith in agreement with the Messiah and are therefore either wilfully grieving the Holy Spirit or are devoid of the Holy Spirit and need to meet Jesus in humble repentance.
 
Some will say, “This is not a salvation issue!” However, it is the fruit of a salvation issue. Those who deny the moral imperatives of the Bible, who deny the deity of Jesus, who deny the power of the Holy Spirit, who deny God’s continued redemptive purposes in Israel, prove that they are either wilfully grieving or devoid of the Holy Spirit.

1.      Matthew 21:43

 
First, the text reads “people” and refers to the redeemed people of Israel, Jews to whom Yeshua is soon to give the Kingdom. The Kingdom is then offered to those Gentiles who will humbly submit to Jesus and allow themselves to be grafted into the commonwealth of Israel as devoted friends of Jesus and His Jewish people.
 
Gentiles who don’t serve the Jewish people prove themselves to be rejecters of the Messiah and therefore no longer qualify to enter His kingdom.
 
Second, in the context of Matthew 21, Yeshua is in Jerusalem surrounded by His disciples, both the 12 and the wider retinue of 120 or more, all of whom are Jews, and who in the coming days would receive the fullness of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and begin the reconciliation of the Jewish people which will reach its fullness at the end of days according to Romans 11:24-27. The people who are being given the kingdom then, are Jews, who will make it available to others by way of consolation.
 
Third, Yeshua is speaking to some of the Pharisees and priests, and those among the people of Israel who are in disobedience to God, living as hypocrites. He is not speaking to all of Israel (Nor to all the Pharisees and Priests) but to the apostate among Israel, just as the prophets did. We note that throughout Biblical history it has never been the case that God has taken the kingdom entirely and permanently away from Israel. Nor will He, Not Ever!
 
Fourth, the Kingdom of God is being taken from one group of people and given to another through the New Covenant established in Messiah’s blood. Therefore, we must ask, to whom is the New Covenant given? The answer is in the Bible:
 
“31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, [h]though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their [i]hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
35 Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for a light by day,
The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night,
Who disturbs the sea,
And its waves roar
(The Lord of hosts is His name):
36 “If those ordinances depart
From before Me, says the Lord,
Then the seed of Israel shall also cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
37 Thus says the Lord:
“If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
I will also cast off all the seed of Israel
For all that they have done, says the Lord.”
 
-Jeremiah 31:31-37
 
Thus, the kingdom is taken from the apostate among ethnic Israel and given to the repentant among ethnic Israel through the new covenant. Uniting the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah into One, the redeemed Jewish people of God. When Yeshua says that the kingdom will be taken from you and given to a people who bear its fruits, this is what He is saying. It’s being taken from unrepentant Jewish apostates and is being given to the redeemed Jews, whose fullness is yet to be realized and therefore includes the ethnic, religious, secular, even the atheist Jews of today, this remnant being chosen and pre-Messianic according to Romans 11:24-27.
 
Gentiles only have access to the New Covenant through Israel to whom it is given [Jeremiah 31:31.]
 
We note that the sun and moon continue to go through their cycles. We note that we remain incapable of measuring the universe. Therefore, according to God’s Word to Jeremiah the prophet God has not and nor will He ever cast off chosen, ethnic, religious, empirical Israel, the Jewish people.
 
Salvation Himself is from the Jews [plural]:
 
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/sefer-yochanan-gospel-according-to-john-chapter-4-pt1-shomroniyt-woman-at-the-well-john-41-26
 
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/pray-for-the-peace-of-jerusalem-psalms-122
 
Those who say God/Yeshua has rejected the Jews, or that He has replaced them, or that we have no responsibility in Messiah to support them, or any other curse with a like ethos, are cursed by God!
 
May God have mercy on them.
 
What I’ve shared with you is only a small selection of scriptures and reasonable explanations from the meta-narrative of Scripture.
 
God will not be mocked. There may be reasons for the false beliefs of some “Christians” but there is absolutely no excuse.
 
Yeshua is refining His bride and will no longer abide that part of the Gentile church that resists His continued purposes for Israel.
 
We Jews have been blinded “in part” so that Gentiles can come into salvation as grafted members of the commonwealth of Israel. [Rom. 11:25-28] This is by way of consolation and not by obligation.
 
As a Jew I share what God has given us with Gentiles, not out of obligation but out of love born of Messiah, why then do so many prideful gentile “Christians,” in hatred, consider that they need not show the love of God toward the people through whom the New Covenant has come to them. Instead they say, “Thanks for Jesus, now piss off!” In doing so they show that they have no access to Salvation (Yeshua). A piece of new fruit that is reliant on the sustenance of the fruit tree cannot say to the orchard Master, “Cut out the root,” and then expect to live to maturity. Without the root both the tree and the fruit perish.
  
In the lead up to the Holocaust many “Christians” took an anti-Zionist and antisemitic position based on Martin Luther’s vile rhetoric and the vile teaching of the so-called Gentile Church Fathers (Not the fathers of the church in fact, all of whom are Jews). The same is happening today in every western “Christianized country” throughout the world.
 
I wonder, what will it take for “Christians” to open their eyes?
 
The two young Jews murdered recently in Washington D.C. were both Messianic Jews, followers of Yeshua. Those among our so-called “Christian” friends who claim Christ but feel no obligation toward Israel are culpable in the murder of these two fellow Christians. I wonder at how their cognitive dissonance shields them from that reality?
 
In the land of Israel, our enemies have been firing rockets at us from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria constantly for the last 20 years or more, but as far as the world is concerned, only our acts of self-defence are indictable.
 
And all this I would understand if it were only non-Christians who held this position of demonising the Jewish people, but it is not. By far the majority of the “Christian Church” holds this view.
 
Discipline and destruction await the Apostate Church.
 
May we love them enough to stand firmly in Messiah the Jew Who is God with us and challenge their abhorrent antichrist worldview.
 
Copyright 2025 Yaakov Ben Yehoshua