Surrounded By Vandals Part II

In one paragraph

This was week five of the "Unbreakable" series, continuing a look at God's relationship with Israel and how that relationship has been understood and contested throughout history. Brian worked through a crowd-sourced Q&A on how to define who Israel is, showed a clip of Tucker Carlson pressing Mike Huckabee on that same question, and then traced a long history of what he called vandalism against...

Read together

1. Psalms 94:14 God will not reject or abandon his special possession, Israel
2. Psalms 135:4 God has chosen Jacob and Israel as his own special treasure
3. Genesis 37:1-20 story of Joseph, his coat, his brothers plotting to kill him
4. Romans Paul speaks about saints and Christians being Israel
5. Galatians 3 God says believers are Israel, grafted in

Talk about it

1. Brian said the promises of God are always guaranteed but not automatic, and that there is a partnership, a give and take, a dance that God invites us into. What does that kind of partnership actually look like in your own experience with God?
2. Brian walked through the Venn diagram of covenantal faithfulness, genealogical descent, and sovereign election as a working definition of who Israel is. Which of those three circles surprised you most when he connected it to Christians, and why?
3. Brian described antisemitism as a form of cultural and moral vandalism, driven by resentment toward something that endures and resists erasure. Do you think that framing helps explain what you have seen or heard about hostility toward Jewish people? What feels right or incomplete about it?
4. Brian pointed out that the world erupted in violence against Israel the day after October 7, and he suggested that none of us are immune from the seed of jealousy that leads to vandalism. That is a hard thing to sit with. How do you personally respond to that idea?
5. At the end, Brian invited people to consider whether there has been vandalism in their own life, and whether they have ever been the vandal. Was there anything from today that you felt you needed to chew on in either of those directions?