The Olive Tree on an Arizona Back Road
a letter to those who love Yeshua and want to love His story rightly.
Lamont and myself, both hobbyist photographers and best friends for ten years (my brother in Yeshua), were on a quiet day trip through eastern Arizona. We were chasing forgotten beauty—old farmhouses, sun-bleached signage, buildings leaning into the desert wind. Somewhere between cracked brick and blue horizon, our conversation drifted toward the olive tree.
Lamont asked what I meant when I said the “Old Testament” is our history recap.
I told him: when Jewish people speak of those Scriptures, we’re not rehearsing a religion—we’re remembering a relationship. It’s the record of how God revealed Himself: what pleases Him, what angers Him, how He disciplines, and how He restores. Israel’s story isn’t a myth; it’s a mirror that shows humanity what the living God is like.
God didn’t choose Israel out of favoritism but out of covenant love, so the world could see His faithfulness (Deuteronomy 7:7–8). And right there in that dusty drive, as we passed the skeletons of old mining towns, the light came on for both of us.
Scripture as Family History
If Israel is the family through whom God revealed Himself, then the Torah, Prophets, and Writings aren’t the preface to Christianity—they’re the foundation. They are not fiction, not propaganda, not myth. They are memory.
I’ve often said—if this book were staged, it would never look the way it does. If someone were fabricating a religion, they would never include what’s in these pages. No human author would write a story that exposes its own heroes so completely—their failures, their betrayals, their blindness, their desperate need for mercy.
What kind of nation would record its own rebellion?
What kind of king would preserve the psalms of his own repentance?
What kind of prophet would write down his despair?
What kind of people would canonize their shame?
If this were a human creation, it would be polished, self-protective, flattering—but it isn’t. It’s raw. It’s painfully honest. It bleeds with failure and forgiveness. That’s what makes this book sacred. It tells the truth about humanity and about God—a God who keeps loving through every collapse, who writes redemption right into the ruins.
The Scriptures don’t flatter; they transform. They show a God who stoops low enough to make holiness possible, a covenant that endures every breaking. The story doesn’t glorify Israel—it glorifies the One who refuses to abandon her. That’s what makes this story different from every other story in the world.
Yeshua didn’t arrive to start something new; He came to make that story live (Matthew 5:17). He came to prove that the God who parted seas and wrote on stone was the same God who would now write His ways on human hearts (Jeremiah 31:31–33; Ezekiel 36:26–27).
If the Bible were written by man alone, it would flatter the reader.
Instead, it convicts us, confronts us, and calls us home.
That’s how you know it’s real.
This isn’t mythology. It’s memory.
Not sermon, but family history.
And it’s through that family—the story of Israel—that the nations came to know the God of the universe.
What Paul Meant by the Olive Tree
When Paul described the olive tree (Romans 11), he used an image everyone in Israel understood. The olive tree symbolized covenant life—deep roots, long memory, branches that could live for centuries. Even if pruned, it would sprout again from the same root. Paul said, That’s God’s story with His people.
The root is the promise God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The trunk is Israel—the people chosen to carry that covenant.
The branches are all who share in that covenant life—first Israel, then Gentiles grafted in through faith in Israel’s Messiah.
Without the root, there is no tree.
Without the tree, there’s nowhere to graft new branches.
Without Israel, there’s no story for the nations to understand who Yeshua is.
Paul warned the nations not to boast against the tree that sustains them (Romans 11:18). Think of it like this: if someone gives you a piece of fruit but tells you to forget the tree it came from, how long before you forget where fruit even comes from? That’s what has happened in much of modern Christianity—we celebrate the fruit (grace, salvation, worship) but ignore the root (covenant, obedience, Israel).
When you forget the root, your faith becomes like a flower in a vase—beautiful for a moment, but already cut off from life.
Everything the nations know about holiness, justice, mercy, and salvation began with Israel. Abraham’s trust, Moses’ obedience, David’s worship, the prophets’ courage—this is the soil where Yeshua grew. You can’t have the Messiah without His people. You can’t have the Gospel without Genesis. You can’t have salvation without revelation.
No root, no tree. No Israel, no Messiah.
Not without Israel.
This is what Paul meant. He wasn’t describing a new religion. He was describing God’s single covenant story—one root, one tree, one plan to bless all nations through Abraham (Genesis 12:3). The Gentiles aren’t replacements; they’re guests grafted in by grace.
The Beauty—and the Burn—of Israel’s Story
Israel’s Scriptures don’t hide her failures; they reveal God’s faithfulness through them. They show what He loves, what wounds Him, and how He restores (Micah 6:8; Jeremiah 2:13). The prophets speak of both judgment and mercy—exile and return.
Paul, a Jew himself, said it plainly: “Has God rejected His people? By no means” (Romans 11:1). God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). Israel’s disobedience didn’t cancel the covenant; it magnified grace. Through her, the nations were invited in—not to replace her, but to provoke her to jealousy so that she might return to her God (Romans 11:11).
A Call Back to Humility
We have to pause here and be honest. When I ask, “Are people that ignorant—or just that selfish?” it isn’t from pride; it’s from heartbreak. The Gentiles were meant to draw Israel back through love, not contempt.
But today, we see the opposite.
Recently I wrote a post asking Christians to reflect on how they treat Israel—not politically, but spiritually. Within hours I was attacked by people who called themselves believers, and what came out of them was the worst anti-Semitism I’ve ever seen. Some even said Yeshua’s name was Lucifer.
That’s not theology. That’s darkness in disguise.
And this is modern church culture in many places: packed auditoriums, polished worship, but little knowledge of the root that upholds us. Yeshua said plainly, “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). Yet how many churches could repeat that with gratitude?
We have to ask: is the church grounded in Scripture or in entertainment? Are we disciples of truth—or consumers of experience?
God warned through Hosea that His people perish for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). In Hebrew, da’at means intimate knowing. God’s people die when they forget how He revealed Himself—through Israel, through covenant, through His Word.
When the church severs itself from that story, it loses context. Without context, conviction fades. We become emotional but uninformed, loud but hollow.
Paul’s warning still echoes: don’t be arrogant toward the branches; don’t become proud, but fear (Romans 11:18, 20). That fear isn’t terror; it’s reverence—the awareness that we stand only because of mercy.
So let’s ask honestly: would the nations ever have known the God of the universe?
Not without Israel.
The New Covenant: Israel’s Promise, the Nations’ Mercy
The New Covenant isn’t a Christian invention; it’s Israel’s promise fulfilled in Yeshua and extended to the nations (Luke 22:20).
At Shavuot—known as Pentecost—the Spirit descended. That wasn’t random; it was the same day God gave Torah at Sinai. The same fire that wrote on stone now wrote on hearts. God didn’t abolish His law; He internalized it (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:27).
The Law wasn’t replaced; it was relocated—from tablets to hearts.
That’s what the New Covenant means: not that obedience disappears, but that love makes obedience possible.
Gentle Corrections for Our Time
When you hear “Old Testament,” think ancestral covenant, not “outdated text.”
When you hear “New Testament,” think fulfilled promise, not “new version.”
When you meet a Jewish neighbor, remember they are beloved for the fathers’ sake (Romans 11:28).
When you worship Yeshua, remember He is Israel’s King (Luke 1:32–33), and you stand by grace (Romans 11:17).
The Point We Keep Missing
I can’t reiterate this enough: without Israel, you do not have Jesus.
Without the people, there is no promise. Without the covenant, there is no cross. Without the root, there is no redemption.
That’s the entire point of this story.
God’s plan was that a nation with a hard heart would one day be shown love by a nation grafted in as a thank-you—not as a replacement. The Gentiles were never called to erase Israel; they were called to love her back into remembrance.
But Christians are missing it tremendously. We’ve turned the story of covenant mercy into a hierarchy of pride. We’ve inherited a treasure and acted as though we earned it. The very people through whom salvation came have become the ones modern believers feel free to scorn, ignore, or lecture.
That’s not gratitude; that’s blindness.
The church should be living proof of Israel’s God—a people so transformed by grace that Israel looks and says, “That’s my God, the One who made covenant with us.”
We were grafted in not to replace the root, but to nourish it with thanksgiving.
That was always the point.
A Call to Return
It’s time for humility—from Jew and Gentile alike. To lay down arrogance, to rediscover the root that sustains us, and to let the Spirit inscribe what Moses carried into our hearts.
One tree. One root. One story.
The nations don’t replace Israel—they join her. The church will find its strength only when it remembers where it came from.
Jeremiah saw the day when all nations would gather to Jerusalem, to the throne of the Lord (Jeremiah 3:17).
Zechariah foresaw ten men from every nation taking 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).
So this week, read Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, and Romans 11 together. See the pattern. Feel the continuity. Then ask yourself:
Am I telling the same story God is telling?
If not, what would repentance look like—toward God, toward Israel, and toward His church?
Selah.