Sermon Recap
Who Is Israel?
Part 3 of 9 in Unbreakable
Parte 3 de 9 de la serie Unbreakable
Brian Hunter · February 1, 2026
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
“For this is what the Lord Almighty says: After the Glorious One has sent me against the nations that have plundered you, for whoever touches you touches the apple of his eye.”
“Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.”
Scripture Referenced
Recap
Week three, and Brian put the question on the screen as the title of the conversation: who is Israel. He had spent two weeks establishing that God will not break this covenant. This was the week he made the room define the word they had been using.
He worked from Jeremiah 31:3 and Zechariah 2:8, where the language stops being legal and becomes personal. Whoever touches you touches the apple of his eye. Then Ezekiel 16, which is the passage most people skip, where the covenant is described as finding someone exposed and vulnerable and covering them. If you were the object of that description, Brian said, it leaves you naked and exposed. That is the condition the covenant answers.
He went back to Abram’s father Terah, who set out for Canaan and stopped partway and settled. It is an easy detail to read past, and it makes the point that the call is specific and God completes what people leave unfinished.
The centre of the message was where the common arguments fall down. Brian’s objection to most confident takes on Israel, from pundits or from anyone else, is that they define Israel by bloodline alone. He put up a Venn diagram of three converging circles instead, because the answer is not one category, and a definition that only uses one is going to produce a conclusion that scripture does not support.
He landed it where the series keeps landing. The covenant is evergreen because God does not change, and believers are still called to love and support all people. Not as a political posture, and not as a substitute for the covenant, but because that is what provoking to jealousy actually looks like when a person does it.