By Charles Gardner — 
Watching Moses depicted on screen over the Christmas holidays got me thinking about the vital necessity of returning to our roots, as he did.
For such action would surely serve to aid the Jewish people’s understanding of the redemption achieved on the cross by Christ, our Passover Lamb.
Moses could so easily have luxuriated in the comfort of Pharaoh’s palace, but instead went to the rescue of his people, persecuted and oppressed by their Egyptian slavedrivers.
It was a costly calling, but in identifying with his own people’s suffering, he helped to bring about their (and the wider world’s) ultimate freedom.
The Passover he initiated at God’s behest, focused on the blood of a sacrificial lamb saving them from divine judgment, was a picture of what Israel’s Messiah would do 1,500 years later. Through Christ, the light to the nations as well as the glory of Israel, all who mark their hearts with his shed blood would know true salvation.
Which means that non-Jews, born again through trusting in Yeshua, have the same spiritual roots as their Jewish brethren and, as such, have the ear of our Heavenly Father by the same faith as Abraham exercised.
So while we may not be of Abraham’s direct bloodline, we inherit his faith. Which surely means that all who call themselves Christian should identify with the Jewish people in their suffering and persecution today.
We cannot wash our hands of this responsibility as Pilate did over Yeshua’s death sentence, because we owe them so much. We would never have known the freedom, peace, joy and hope of Christ without the faithfulness of the Jewish prophets and those first disciples of Jesus.
Yet most of us, in the West at least, feel relatively safe in our comfortable Christian world. Our ‘synagogues’ do not come under attack, and our members are generally not picked on for their faith allegiance.
It’s worth remembering that Christianity did not come down to earth – out of the blue, as it were – as a new religion to follow. It is, in fact, completely Jewish, and ignoring our Hebraic heritage will ultimately cause our faith to dry up, no longer fed by the nourishing sap from the olive root that is Israel (Romans 11:17).
Isaiah prophesied of these days, when “the root of Jesse” (Jesus) would be a rallying banner for people in every nation while, simultaneously, the Lord would reach out his hand a second time to regather his chosen people from the four corners of the earth (see Isaiah 11).
When the ancient Israelites “groaned in their slavery”, God heard their cry for help and called Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. Yet even there they are still not safe, so God is calling Christians (as a collective modern Moses) to lead them to their only real place of safety – in the arms of Yeshua, their Messiah.
If we have had a ‘burning bush’ encounter with the living God thanks to the gospel proclaimed by the Jewish apostles, then I believe we should be standing before the intimidating Pharaohs of today (in whatever form they take), demanding (through prayer and proclamation) the release from bondage of God’s people so they may inherit the eternal blessings offered, first for the Jew and also for the Gentile (Romans 1:16).
As St Paul sternly rebuked the Gentile believers in Rome: “You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” (Romans 11:18) And Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, is the “father of all who believe” (Romans 4:11) – so, by faith, our roots are in Abraham.
As for Moses, “he refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt…” (Hebrews 11:24-26)
Our Jewish brothers to whom we owe so much are being disgracefully mistreated. Should we not be reaching out to them in love and fellowship, identifying with their predicament because they are, after all, part of our Saviour’s flesh and blood family?
