My wife and I were doing a bible study last night and I had quite a few 'ah ha' moments during our time in scripture.
Let me first put this into context....
A member of her family is part of an interesting group of believers. They believe that true salvation comes through the blood. So if you are a member of the family of Shem (Noah's children were Shem, Ham and Japheth), you have a unique lineage directly from the flood to the 'true Israelites'.
Obviously, this is a heated debate and how people will be saved in the last days simply because of their bloodlines. Or let me rephrase that, they have a bunch of different denominations and sects, but my wife's family member does believe you have to love God but the added bonus of belief in God is that if you are from the line of Shem....Instant heaven.
This has troubled my wife for quite sometime because she seems to go back and forth with her family member about this. And while we cannot for the life of us agree that an ever loving God would choose any one 'bloodline' over the other, it comes down to prayer for us.
So last night, we did this study on what does the bible actually say about the chosen people of God. And I had this revelation of sorts while doing the study....See if this makes sense to you :)
First, as we know all humanity comes from 1 of 3 lines of Noah....You have Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Genesis 9:18) And with this you have the beginnings of these groups of people...
Shem - Israelits (Genesis 11:10,26)
Ham - Canaanites (Genesis 9:18)
Japheth - Gentiles (Genesis 10:2-5)
So we can all agree based on scripture, every single human being comes from these 3 fore-fathers.
So far so good.....But let's look at who Jesus came to save.
Israel - Clearly shows through scripture that Jesus came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24). So without question, His people were priority number one while He was on earth. No argument there. But where the Israelites' doctrine ends here, there is so much more. They argue that Israel (by blood) are the ones that are to be saved alone. But is this what Jesus taught?
Canaanites - We see in Matthew 15 (verses 22-28) that Jesus also saved people from Canaan as described through the story of the Canaanite woman and her faith. What's amazing to note is that Jesus on multiple occasions speaks of 'great faith' found in this story and also of the centurion (Matthew 8:10) So clearly, the Israelites were doing something contrary to what God intended. But let's keep going...
Gentiles - And finally, we see throughout the entire new testament that the goal of the church was to reach the Gentiles to the ends of the earth. But let's find an example, and we do so in Luke chapter 2 verse 30 to 32. Simeon's prophesy when he laid eyes on Jesus shows us that Jesus is to be a light to the Gentiles. But let's confirm this in Isaiah 60:3. Again, the Gentiles keep popping up.
Now some argue that Gentiles and Canaanites are all the same people and 'splits' of Israel. But is that so? Because we learned in Genesis, that each of the forefathers were distinct and every single human being comes from 1 of these 3 people. So....Let's put this together.
Acts 1:8 perfectly sums this up...
The gospel was to go out into the world in this order...
Jerusalem first (Israel)
Then to Judea (Canaan)
Then onto Samaria (Gentiles)
Interesting right?
The gospel was to go to everyone. Period. We are not saved by blood lines. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus. It's not something we are born with and it's not something we can earn. Heaven is open to every single kindred, nation, tongue and people...But we must come to the feet of Christ.
Note: Here is a link to the PDF of the full study my wife and I did. It's a great one, and clearly shows us how great our Lord and Saviour is!