By Charles Gardner —
A Jewish man who has been following Jesus for 40 years is calling on fellow Christians to make him known among his people.
God’s command to Pharaoh (via Moses) to “Let my people go” when they were slaves in ancient Egypt has now become “Let my people know”, according to Joseph Steinberg, CEO of the International Mission to Jewish People.
Whereas Jewish people have long been called to be a ‘light to the nations’ – fulfilled when the early followers of Jesus spread the gospel throughout the Roman world – they are now in need of hearing the good news again.
This is emphasized by Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, in his letter to the first generation of Roman believers (Romans 10:14), a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles.
In Joseph’s view, Paul is saying that the only way to see the whole world filled with the knowledge and glory of the Lord is by telling Jewish people about Jesus!
Writing for Evangelicals Now, a UK-based monthly newspaper, he says it is “the Gentile church’s calling and responsibility to bring the Jewish people back to a saving faith in Jesus.”
Basically, that we owe it to the Jewish people to preach the gospel they first shared with us.
Echoing Paul’s argument in Romans 11, Joseph urges Christians: “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. It wasn’t so much that I got angry, but rather the rest of the family did as Mark attempted to witness to them one by one. When he got to me, my response was to go and read the Bible to investigate what my friend was telling me.
“Ultimately, after a year of studying the Old Testament, watching Mark’s life, and being provoked both to 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’.”
