During the course of winter and spring, I asked members and guests of Legacy UMC to submit questions they would like answered in a sermon. The sermon series “Ask Anything” will run throughout the summer, and I will be attempting to answer many of the generated questions. I won’t have time to preach on all 50+ questions that were submitted, so I will try to spend some time here on my “Frog Blog” answering some of the remaining questions.

Last week I started by preaching on “Does God have favorites?” (Check it out on our website: www.legacyumc.org if you wish.) Along with that question was this one I want to try and answer today: “What about Jewish people; since they are God’s chosen people, do they go to heaven as we do even though they don’t believe Jesus is the Son of God?”

I have always maintained that Jewish people are still “God’s Chosen” but I’m not sure it means today what it meant in the Old Testament times. Certainly political changes in that part of the world have complicated our understanding and adding Jesus to the mix (and the Jews preponderance of disbelief that he was God’s Messiah) has further made it more interesting.

There are a couple very helpful chapters in the New Testament that speak to this issue which address this far more completely than I can. Check these representative verses: Romans 9:6-8 “Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promise to Israel? No, for not all who are born into the nation & Israel are truly members of God’s people! Being descendants of Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children.”

If this is true, then it behooves us to know what it means to be “The children of promise.” Who are they? Are we they? Many people assume that since America has been so blessed by God we must be God’s “New” children – I doubt that!
Let’s look at one more scripture: “The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.” Galatians 3:7

I believe this scripture makes it clear. I want to close by challenging all of us to use this scripture not to determine who’s “excluded” from God’s family but to propel us all to make sure we are “included” by putting, keeping, practicing our faith in Jesus Christ and putting that faith in faithful action!