Why weren't the Jews told to spread the news of God?

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I wondered why they weren’t but Jesus told us to spread the Gospel, why didn’t God tell the Jews to spread the news of Him and spread Judaism?

It seems that most of the world at the time were following false gods, why wouldn’t God want other nations to follow Him the same way as the Jews?
 
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The Jews weren’t too good at following God themselves at the time. A sizeable chunk of the Old Testament is God just sorta working on or with the Jews so that they could completely reject the idolatry surrounding them. Monotheism wasn’t very established. Rather, the Jews became monotheistic somewhat gradually, moving from worshipping Yahweh alongside other gods, to worshipping Yahweh alone while acknowledging the existence of other gods (monolatry), to strict monotheism. They were busy learning how to worship God themselves, in a way.
 
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Gripper said:
I wondered why they weren’t but Jesus told us to spread the Gospel, why didn’t God tell the Jews to spread the news of Him and spread Judaism?
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Rabbinical Judaism did not come into existence until centuries after Jesus.

Jesus and virtually all the earliest Christians were Jewish -
and are the Fulfillment of Hebrew Scriptures aka the proper Sect (Christianity) of God

They indeed preached the Good News of the Messiah of all People – Jesus…

_
 
They were. Be fruitful and multiply. It’s a different method, but it definitely led to more people who were aware of God.
 
It’s the same with all of us, really. I may have worded it a bit patronisingly above. Perhaps “They were still being introduced to the correct worship of God” would have been a better phrasing.
 
I think the phrasing was just fine, I’ve often thought of Judaism as an endless argument (in the sense of discussion rather than rowing) about God and how to live an ethical life and, from time to time, with God.
 
I think they were. That was the whole point of the nation of Israel, to lead the nations in the right praise of God. But they failed, over and over they became conformed to the societies around them and forgot their purpose. That is why God needed to come down on his own, to be a “light to the nations,”

“It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6
 
Because God had chosen them out of all the nations of the world for Himself, Deut 7:6-8.
After Jesus was rejected by His people God’s focus was global. Jesus was to be a light unto the gentiles. Acts 13:47 and Isaiah 42:6.
 
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It was all part of the master plan. From a family, a tribe, a kingdom, then global. Like watching a seed turn into a full grown oak.
 
How would you suggest that the Jews do this? They were confined to a very small region in the Middle-East, then they were picked up and taken to Egypt. When they finally were freed from that bondage, they wandered around until they found a king that could unite them, but that didn’t last long before they were conquered again by Babylon. Eventually, the Romans took control of the region and that was actually a step up for the Jews because the Romans allowed them to self-govern, as long as they kept the peace and pledged loyalty to Rome.

Even more importantly, the Romans built roads and had means of communicating across long distances. In Old Testament times, the world was not the connected place that it was by Jesus’ day. It was difficult to travel even a few miles, so it is no surprise that God waited until the infrastructure was ready for Him to send Jesus. Paul and Peter needed roads to do their work. Then the Good News could spread across the Roman world quickly and take hold in places that were far apart.

So it wasn’t so much that God didn’t want the Jews to spread belief in Him, He knew they couldn’t because the world wasn’t quite ready yet. The Jews carried the torch while the world waited for Jesus.
 
Weren’t the apostles all Jewish, and Paul who was Jewish but a Roman citizen so he was able to spread the good news to the gentiles? Jesus was Jewish, decedent from the family line of King David.
 
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Did you learn that from Scott Hahn and the St. Paul Center? They had a video series on Christ Through Salvation History that I watched most of Lent last year, and they taught that!
 
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I believe that, at first, the nation of Israel thought of itself as a nation beholden to Yahweh, who was their national God. Nevertheless, they believed in the existence of other gods, who were the national gods of the other nations around them (i.e., Babylon). When Babylon defeated Israel and destroyed the Temple, it was viewed by many as the defeat of Yahweh by the god of Babylon (I think it was Baal). As such, many people left their faith in Yahweh and assimilated to the Babylonian religion during the exile. Yet, a remnant remained faithful to the LORD. Then, after the Babylonian Exile ended with the ruling of Cyrus the Great and and the remnant was allowed to return to Israel, this remnant began to see Yahweh as THE one and only God, who worked through all of these events to humble Israel and eventually bring His people back to their land. It is at this time that we begin to see the language of Israel as a “light to the nations” appear in the biblical literature. Now that the Israelites believed that Yahweh was the only God and that He alone was in control of the nations and forces of the universe, they began want to become a “light to the nations” about their faith in the one God.

Nevertheless, I don’t think that the active spreading of the faith ever really became a part of Judaism as it continued to develop. It shifted more into the Christian sphere, since Jesus told His disciples to go out and baptize all nations.

May God bless you all! 🙂
 
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I did some time back! Called Our Father’s Plan. It was excellent.
 
Gripper said:
I wondered why they weren’t but Jesus told us to spread the Gospel, why didn’t God tell the Jews to spread the news of Him and spread Judaism?

It seems that most of the world at the time were following false gods, why wouldn’t God want other nations to follow Him the same way as the Jews?
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This is a good question. @Gripper
 
I often think it’s not so much a question of belief in God, more that we’re constantly bumping into God.
 
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They had the old covenant. This was a covenant between them and God. It was not between God and the whole world in this way, yet somehow they could have hope because Abraham, the patriarch in faith, was told that all the families would know God, and that his seed would number so large it would be like the stars or grains of sand.
So they knew this was destined for greatness.
But when? Oh, poor Jacob! Poor forefathers in faith! They were committed to bondage. But God, the God who brought them out of Egypt, was God of Heaven and Earth. There was no failure in Him or deceit in His Word. They were given the Law of Moses, and made into a great nation. They failed many times as they fell into harlotry, idolatry, losing their way.
Of course, if a man were to see their way of life and desired to join the nation following God, he wasn’t disallowed. But this nation, word of this nation’s moral code and belief in God did spread, and the hearts of the pagans were softened. And it is at a wonderfully perfect time in history that our Lord came and made Jew and Gentile one. The rest is history–and our future. There are stages and steps in the history of the world, but we can trust in God’s loving providence.
 
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dpeisenbeisz said:
How would you suggest that the Jews do this? They were confined to a very small region in the Middle-East, then they were picked up and taken to Egypt.
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Had God wanted to spread his word in Egypt, then it would have been spread, the Jews had plenty of time. But God only chose the Jews to be his people, so his word was not spread at that time.
 
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