Just to recap, the Old Testament records that God's chosen people, the Children of Israel, split into two parts, with the House of Judah forming after breaking away from the House of Isreal. They lived seperately, the were governed separately and God dealt with them as separate entities. From that time onwards the House of Israel was known as the Northern Kingdom; the House of Judah was known as the Southern Kingdom.
The Northern Kingdom was exiled from Israel by the Assyrians between 740 and 722 BC, as well as Jews, Benjaminites, and Levites who were exiled from the Southern Kingdom by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The latter returned to their homeland, rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem and re-established their worship of Jehovah, and it was into this society, the Judea depicted in the four gospels of the New Testament, that Jesus was born.
"dispora": the dispersion or spreading of something that was originally localized (as a people or language or culture). In the case of the Children of Isreal, it refers to the dispersion of the Jews outside Israel; from the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem when they were exiled to Babylonia up to the present time.
Much of the New Testament was written around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD when Judea, the home of the people of the House of Judah, ceased to exist as a nation. The House of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, had already ceased to exist a considerable time before, having never returned to their homeland after the Babylonian exile. Though they still existed as individuals, and as such, being the descendants of Abraham, were still receipients of the promises God made to Abraham relating to his discendants, they had long ceased to exist as a nation, as the Northern Kingdom, and no longer identified themselves as such. They had lost their true identity, later generations were oblivious to their calling as members of the House of Israel, and for this reason they became known as the lost of the tribes or House of Israel.
Don't let the application of the name Israel to the modern day nation fool you into believing that it is again occupied by the House of Israel. The members of the House of Israel to whom God gave specific promises remain "lost". Those who occupy modern day Israel are of the House of Judah, who are recipients of their own promises granted by God.
The New Testament writers made a clear distinction between the descendants of two houses and saw them as separate entities. James addresses his letter to 'the Twelve Tribes scattered abroad among the Gentiles in the Dispersion'; Peter his to the 'the elect exiles in the Disperson scattered abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia'.
Paul, in his letters to The Romans, Galatians, Hebrews and Ephesians, not only make references to Lost Israel but the text indicates some to whom these letters were written were part of that dispersed lost House of Israel. These were undoubtedly the people of Israel referred to by Hosea when he told them God would not have mercy on them for a time, but that they were again to be brought into covenant with Him. So that from "You are not my people," it should be said unto them, "You are the sons of the living God" (Hos. 1:6-10).
In John 7:33, we read, "Then Jesus said to them, "I shall be with you a little while longer, and then I go to Him who sent Me. 34 "You will seek Me and not find Me, and where I am you cannot come."
35 Then the Judeans said among themselves, "Where does He intend to go that we shall not find Him? Does He intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?"
The people of Judea at the time of Jesus thus believed that a disperson had taken place, that these dispersed people had not returned to be re-united with them, but were in fact now scattered among the Greeks (some translate the word 'Greek' as 'Gentiles'). The Greek empire had occupied a large section of Europe to the north and west of Judea. The word "dispersion" is in fact from the Greek word "diaspora". The definition is, "Israelite residents in Gentile countries".
It is clear that Jesus' coming, crucifixion and resurrection had many effects on the world and history. Churches tell us that Jesus came to die for the sins of the world, but that was never the reason given by Jesus as his purpose and calling. When he prayed to His Father in the garden he stated that he had accomplished God's directive, He was praying this prayer before His crucifixion. Clearly he wasn't talking about His redemptive work on the cross.
So what was that mission, what did he come to do? He said he had come to seek and to save those which are lost (Luke 19: 10). This concept was echoed in Mark 2: 17, when the leaders of the temple asked Jesus, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?”, as if to say "why do you choose to eat with him, rather than us richteous ones?", he told them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
There are many occasions when what seem like throwaway remarks from Jesus say far more than we may realise. One in particular is heard in an exchange between a Canaanite woman where he tells her, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." By saying it that way, he is also saying, though indirectly, "I am not sent to the sheep of the House of Judah." Here Jesus qualified specifically which lost people he was referring to. That is not to say he did not care about the rest of humanity, rather that the job of reaching the nations of the earth was someone else's calling: "you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1: 8) he told his disciples; that was their task. His task was to seek and to save those which are lost, the House of Israel - to make disciples of them and send them out to fulfil God's promise to Abraham that "through his seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed".
The gospel records show that Jesus adequately visited all the towns and cities within Judea at least once during his three years of ministry to the Jews, which explains why, in Matthew 10, when He sent out the twelve apostles, Jesus said, "Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," and this injunction must refer to the whole of this dispensation, for it finishes with "Verily, 1 say unto you, You shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, until the Son of man be come" (verse 23), showing how wide must have been the dispersion in those days. It also clarifies that his reference to Israel in this instance was not to the country we now call Isreal which they called Judea.
Before the birth of Jesus, Caiaphas had prophesied, "that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only (ie. the Jews), but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad" (John 11:51-52). These must surely be the diaspora, the lost of the House of Israel.
Jesus's parable of the husbandmen (Matt. 21:33-46) refers to the rejection of Jesus by the House of Judah and so the "other husbandmen" or the "nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" must of necessity be the House of Israel. For is not The Lord "the Redeemer of Israel" and the Nation so redeemed must be the one capable of bringing forth the fruits of the Kingdom which was taken from the Jews, and to be given to a Nation?
"Take the message of the arrival of Kingdom of God to the lost sheep of the House of Israel" was Jesus' explicit instructions to the disciples. The plan was to go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel first, who in turn would be given the task of taking the message to the Gentiles (Mark 16:15). There was a reason for this, as we will soon discover. The New Testament reveals that the Apostles went only to the places where history tells us that the Lost Tribes of Israel had settled. With one missionary journey Paul had planned to go to Asia (east), but the Holy Spirit forbade him - so where did Paul end up going? West, to the regions where the lost sheep of the House of Israel had settled.
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