God’s desire has always been for all people to enjoy what He originally created them for—perfect communion with Him—so they might live in the abundance of His blessings. Ever since humanity fell and brought sin into the earth, God has wanted to redeem His creation, and His means of doing this has always been through Israel. This is why He chose them. Again, there was nothing they did to warrant this selection; He picked them.
From the very birth of the Jewish people, God revealed His plan that through them He would bless the world. Long before Israel came to be, the Lord spoke a profound covenant promise to Abraham:
I will indeed bless you and I will indeed multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens and as the sand that is on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gate of their enemies. Through your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice (Gen. 22:17-18).
God’s plan of blessing and redemption culminated when He sent His only Son, Jesus, to save Israel. More than once, Yeshua spoke of how He came first for the Jewish people. In Matthew 15:24, He told the Canaanite woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Earlier, when sending out His twelve disciples throughout Judea, He specifically instructed them, “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:5b–6). And elsewhere, Yeshua clearly told the Samaritan woman at the well that “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).
Why was Jesus so exclusive in pronouncing that He came for the Jewish people first? Because God had established a covenant that said He would bless all the nations of the world through the Jewish people. The Lord wanted to bless both Jew and Gentile. And the only way He could accomplish this for both, according to His own covenant, was to go through the Jewish people. He would not break that covenant.
Jesus was the very fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. Despite Israel rejecting Him as the ultimate blessing from God, the Messiah’s death and resurrection opened the way for “all the families of the earth [to] be blessed” (Acts 3:25). This is wonderful news for everyone; it is the good news of the gospel. But what I hope you can notice is that God did not stray from His plan to bless the earth through Israel, as was spoken to Abraham, and neither will He stray from this in the last days: His blessing comes through the channel of Israel.
