Boasting Against the Branches

“God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

Dear readers, if you will indulge me, let me tell you a parable just a very little bit like the one Nathan told David. I trust you may not have cause to be as stricken as David was when the prophet’s point went home into his soul, but if you need it, you need it, just like David did.

If you are not “the man”, all the better, not just for you but for us all.

Our verse for the day comes from the end of Acts 3, where Peter is speaking to Jews in Solomon’s Portico in Jerusalem, encouraging them to repent and believe in Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Messiah, whom they had recently crucified, and whom Peter claimed had risen from the dead. The reason these guilty Jews were inclined to pay attention is that through Peter and John, God had just healed a man lame from birth right in front of them.

One Meaningful Little Word

That’s all background, but I find it interesting that when Luke wrote down the story for us some 35 years later with the same diligent research and inquiry that produced his gospel, he included the word “first”. God sent his servant to you first. Packaged into that little adverb is a whole lot of truth Jews were deeply disinclined to hear.

First, we should probably confirm Peter actually said it. Skeptics might easily argue, as they do from other scriptures Luke wrote, that he was introducing a subtle theological point into the historical record that Peter was unlikely to have actually expressed at the time. After all, he was encouraging Jews to repent and believe. To have introduced the suggestion that God might have a plan to bless nations other than Israel through believing in Israel’s Messiah, the skeptics might argue, would work against the repentance Peter was trying to produce. In fact, they might say, even Peter himself did not come to grips with the idea of taking the gospel to the Gentiles until much later in the book of Acts, when the Lord first gave him a vision, then sent him to the Gentile Cornelius. Why then would Peter refer here to something he had still to fully come to understand?

The Boy Who Won’t Share His Toys

Jews (including Peter) were notoriously penurious with God’s blessings. Like a little boy who won’t share his toys with the neighbor children, they were easily triggered by any suggestion that God might expect spiritual generosity from them. If we question this, all we have to do is look at Luke’s first book to see how religious Jews treated the Lord Jesus when he revealed God’s plans to bless not just Israel but the entire world through Messiah.

In Nazareth, Jesus inflamed the whole synagogue by reminding them that the prophet Elijah was sent to a woman in Sidon rather than to a woman in Israel when on the run from Ahab, and that Elisha cleansed no Israelite lepers (despite their numbers), but only a Syrian enemy. The Lord’s point was simple: If you will not accept me and the message I’m bringing, others will, and God will bless them for it. The notion that God might in times past have favored Gentiles over his own people drove the Lord’s listeners so crazy that they tried unsuccessfully to hurl him to his death from a local clifftop.

Rejecting Skepticism

That’s the same point Peter is making in Acts 3, albeit less flagrantly, and skeptics may raise the possibility that Luke, writing later when taking the message of Christ to the Gentiles was more acceptable, simply inserted this little theological dig by editorial fiat.

I think we can reject that notion out of hand. Luke spoke under the authority of the Spirit of God, and described Peter’s language under the same Spirit of God. The teaching of the early church is that we can trust the New Testament writers just as we can trust those of the Old Testament. No, Luke did not insert his theology into his historical account of Peter’s speech in Acts 3 any more than he inserted it into his summary of the Lord’s ministry in the synagogue in chapter 4 of his gospel.

So then, Peter said what he said in Acts 3 at the risk of inflaming the Jews and putting himself and John on the hot seat, and it was a discreet warning to his audience: “You’re getting first crack at this, but others will hear it too.” Yet, as we have noted, this kind of candor about God’s plans for blessing the Gentiles is no exceptional event. Jesus did it. Paul would do it much later, nearly getting himself murdered by a mob.

Not a New Idea

Moreover, none of these men was introducing Jews to a new idea about the generosity and love of their God. Their scriptures spoke of the Lord’s solemn promise to bless the Gentiles from one end to another. To Abraham, God promises, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That’s from the early chapters of Genesis.

David, the psalmist king, made Israel sing about it:

“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.”

Probably some in Israel mumbled it rather than rejoicing in it, but David put it there in his psalms for them to get their heads around. Later, Isaiah prophesied it:

“He [Messiah] will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.”

Again, he writes:

“I will make you [Messiah] as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

This was always God’s endgame: blessing the entire world. But to accomplish it he raised up his Servant. Then he sent him to the Jews first.

Telling You the Obvious

I am telling you the obvious, am I not? If you’re a Gentile Christian reader of this blog today, you have received the gospel message and are currently enjoyed the rich blessings of a loving God. Moreover, you are enjoying them at the expense of Israel. If you doubt that, go read Romans 11: “Through their [Israel’s] trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.” That’s not because God made Israel sin so he could pour out his wrath on them, but because our God is so magnificently sovereign that he used the entirely voluntary thoughts, words and actions of wicked men to abound to his own glory. He is still doing it today.

What’s Paul’s point in writing this to Gentiles? Do not be arrogant toward those branches that were broken off the olive tree of God’s blessing and testimony in order that you and I could be grafted in. Do not be arrogant toward the Jews as a nation. Why? Because “God has the power to graft them in again”, and believe me, Paul says, they are a more natural fit. God is going to bless the nation of Israel once again in fulfillment of his promises. Jesus is going to rule the world from Jerusalem surrounded by his fellow Jews. Don’t believe that’s possible? Oddly enough, I’d say you have insufficient faith in the sovereignty, generosity and love of your own God. Coming from some theological places, that’s truly ironic.

First, and Finally

Folks, I’m hearing an awful lot of boasting against the branches online these days, most often from young, passionate men. But the Father sent his servant Son to the Jews first. Not only that, he will send him to the Jews again, and you and I will not be waiting here on earth to see it. We’ll be looking over his shoulder as he rides to the defense of his earthly people.

Don’t make the mistake of boasting against the branches. It’s very trendy, but it’s very wrong. You know who you sound like when you do it? You sound exactly like first century Gentile-hating Jews.

That, my friends, is not a good look.