What am I missing out on if I don't 'do' Israel?

Between thinking 'How odd of God to choose the Jews!'  and 'odder still are those who choose the Jewish God but reject the Jews!'  (William Ewer)  there's many Christians who've:

• not thought about Israel's ongoing place in God's purposes
• or not done so to avoid the challenges it might raise

As it doesn't seem to compromise their faith, they're OK about it.  Yet to not know how our faith is rooted in God's choice of Israel is to miss out on the truth that it'll all finish where it all began.

"For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession. The Lord did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more than other peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath He swore to your ancestors..."  (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).

It was with God's choice of Israel to represent Himself through, as "a light to the nations"  and "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" .  Not because they deserved it, but because through both their belief and their unbelief He could reveal Himself to them and to the world (Exodus 19:6, Deuteronomy 7:6-8 & Isaiah 49:6).

To equip them for this, He gave them covenants and promises that would provide a hands-on experience of His righteousness, as well as laws to help them stay close to Him where they'd be safe.

"He declares His word to Jacob, His decrees and His rulings to Israel. He has not done this with any other nation" (Psalm 147:19-20).

More even than this, He promised to love them with an everlasting love He'd never renege on (Jeremiah 31:35-6) to establish a gifting and calling Paul recognised as "irrevocable"  (Romans 11:29).  And furthermore a New Covenant, being well aware of how they'd fall short of His glory (Jeremiah 31:31).

"In those days, ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you'" (Zechariah 8:23).

Also foretelling an end-time reign of One descended from the greatest of their kings during which they'd be fully restored (Isaiah 9:7 & Amos 9:11f).  When, despite their failings, He would finish what He started through them, and fully reveal Himself to the whole world (Zechariah 14:16-21).

The Jewish Messiah being the crucial link, who would fulfil the promised New Covenant.  Both as God and "Lamb of God," to keep the Law and be the atoning sacrifice that the Tabernacle's Altar of Burnt Offering could never satisfy, so Israel could be redeemed and empowered to fulfil His purposes (John 1:14 & 29).

"And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants ... these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer" (Isaiah 56:6).

In His supreme grace, Gentiles who previously were "excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise"  could be included by accepting Him as their Saviour,  a fact that Paul urged us to never, ever forget (Ephesians 2:12).

 "The mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel" (Ephesians 3:6) .

If we don't 'do' Israel, we can't understand how the roots of Christianity reveal its past, lead to its present and look to the greatness of its future.  This means that while what we sincerely believe might still be 'truth and nothing but the truth,' it can't be 'the whole truth' without the greater story, and this can lead us into wrong conclusions.

"Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Saviour, and my hope is in you all day long" (Psalm 24:4-5).

Since the 'whole truth' is not solely contained in the New Testament and cannot be interpreted with a 3rd millennium, Gentile mindset, it comes from seeing how the 'New is hidden in the Old' and the 'Old is revealed in the New',  most of which was written by Jewish writers for Jewish (or Jewish-oriented) readers.

This reality sets our Christian faith in its proper context and can then greatly enhance it;  especially by explaining what, in Paul's olive tree analogy, we're "grafted into" and how "it is not you who support the root, but the root supports you"  (Romans 11:17).

This is why it was not so odd of God to choose the Jews!