Jesus Christ, the Land of Blessing

Beside the altar the command goes out: strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. So fierce is God’s anger that he would pursue Israel to the very end and kill them, and the judgment begins with God himself tearing down the temple he had cherished.

He brought it down not because judgment was his aim but because he hated sin. That he waited until Israel’s sin had reached its full measure, and that even in judgment he did not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, both show the heart of a parent who cannot abandon a child. Through the remnant left in this way he promised to raise up again the fallen tent of David, and that promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who came from the line of David.

Israel, once carried off into captivity, returned to the homeland by the decree of Cyrus, rebuilt their towns and ate the fruit of what they themselves had planted and gathered. Just as he promised to plant them in their own land, never again to be uprooted, so those who are in Christ are secure. Now it falls to us, who received the gospel through the devotion of the Jewish people, to carry it to the ends of the earth.