Let my people know

When the Israelites were held as slaves in Egypt, God commanded Pharaoh, via Moses, to ‘Let my people go’ (Ex. 5:1). You may remember that the Israelites had not yet discovered God’s purpose for them as a people. All they knew was slavery and the desire to be set free.

What they later discovered at Sinai and in the giving of the law, was that they were a nation created by God with a purpose – to be lights to the other nations – so that the whole world will know God and be filled with His glory. Israel was born as a nation on the slopes of Mount Sinai at that first Shavuot (Pentecost) and they were commissioned to be a light to the nations.

Sin and idolatry

Right from the beginning we see the problem of sin and idolatry, and Moses is sent back down the mountain by God to a people worshipping a golden calf. On that first Pentecost, 3,000 Israelites died in God’s judgment of their sin (contrast that with 3,000 Israelites being saved at the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection).

God was determined to make a holy people who would be a light and bring God’s blessing to all the other nations – this was the sole purpose for his making of a nation from Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 12:1-3). The problem we face is, how can a people who have lost the light fulfil their calling to share that light with the rest of the world?

Paul makes sense of this quandary in Romans 10 when he expresses his longing for Israel to be saved, stating that the only way to receive the light is by believing in the light of the world, the Messiah Jesus (10:1). Paul goes on to plead with the early church, crying: ‘How can they (the Israelites) believe if they have not heard the message? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?’

Jew and Gentile in God’s plan

Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, is wanting to point the church to the only way to see the whole world filled with the glory and knowledge of the Lord: telling Jewish people about Jesus! Paul understands that it is the Jewish people’s calling to bring God’s salvation to the world and thus the ‘life from the dead’ spoken of in Romans 11, but it is the Gentile church’s calling and responsibility to bring the Jewish people back to a saving faith in Jesus. How do we know?

Paul quotes Moses in verse 19: ‘I will make you envious by those who are not a nation, I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.’ Here we see the relationship between the Jew and Gentile in God’s mission plan for the whole world. Jew leads Gentile to faith and Gentile leads Jew to faith. That is how it happened throughout the book of Acts, and it is Paul’s plea that this continues.

And so, I echo Paul here: ‘Let my people know!’ Provoke them to jealousy, even anger. But please, for the sake of the world, tell them of the only one who can save them.

I am so grateful for my friend, Mark, who risked my ire as he shared the gospel with me. Ultimately, after a year of studying the Old Testament, watching Mark’s life, and being provoked to both envy of his relationship with God and anger at his insistence that Jesus was the only way to God, the Lord convicted me of my sin and saved me.

There are many more Jewish people like me who have been provoked to envy and angered and then saved. God is using us to be lights to the world. The Bible’s challenge to the church is to love Jewish people enough to share Jesus with us, love the world enough to give us the light to shine, and love God enough to be obedient to His command to ‘Let my people know’.

Joseph Steinberg is the CEO of International Mission to Jewish People and has been a Jewish follower of Jesus for over 40 years.