Jesus: The Fulfillment Of Israel For Us Series

1. And, indeed, that’s what we find. If we look back at the Exodus story, we find God saying to the Israelite people things like, “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” (Exo 19:5 (NIV)). In another passage God said something very similar: “The Lord rescued you from . . . Egypt in order to make you his very own people and his special possession.” (Deut 4:20 (NLT)).

2. So, what are we to make of this? The God who shows no partiality, and who says He doesn’t play favorites, chose a particular people to be His special possession. This doesn’t make sense, does it?

B. Actually, this makes perfect sense, and here’s how. God explains in the Bible why He chose the people of Israel. This wasn’t a case of Him playing favorites, or making some random choice. Rather, God chose Israel for two reasons, both of which are very important for understanding how Jesus is Israel’s fulfillment. First,

1. God chose Israel because of His promise to Abraham. God was keeping a promise.

a. In the twelfth chapter of Genesis, God asked Abraham to put his faith completely in God. He told Abraham to leave his country and go to a land that God would show him. And He promised Abraham that if he would do that—if he would completely trust and obey God—then God would make his descendants into a great nation. And then God said, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:1–3 (NIV)).

(1) So God promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation, and God promised that all the earth would be blessed as a result.

(2) And God reiterated that promise throughout Genesis, first repeating it several times to Abraham, and then to Abraham’s son, Isaac, and then to his grandson, Jacob. Because Abraham had believed God, God was going to make his descendants into a great nation, through whom all the world would be blessed.

(3) God even told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in the land of Egypt. But God promised that after 400 years of slavery, God Himself would rescue Abraham’s descendants and fulfill the promise He had made to Abraham. (Gen 15:13–14).

(a) And that’s exactly what happened. Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, took his family and went to the land of Egypt during a severe famine (Gen 46:5–27. See also Exo 1:1–7). At first, the Egyptians were very friendly towards them. But after awhile, a new dynasty came to power in Egypt, and they decided to make the Israelite people slaves (Exo 1:8–11)

i) Historians tell us that these new rulers were most likely the Hyksos kings who ruled over Egypt from about 1750 B.C. until about 1570 B.C. They were actually not native Egyptians, but they had settled in Egypt in large numbers and slowly gained control of the land. (Wilbur Fields, Old Testament History at 146 (Joplin: College Press, Rev. Ed. 1998)).

ii) After the Egyptians drove the Hyksos out, native Egyptians once again ruled Egypt. But, they continued the oppression of the Israelites, who by then were fully integrated as slaves in the Egyptian society. (Fields, Old Testament History at 146).