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ប្រតិចារិក
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Well, it's sure better to be standing on the promises than sitting on the premises. And we're going to have a challenge tonight. We're going to try to make sense of the Middle East conflict. Now, part one deals with the causes of that conflict and understanding those causes. Part two will deal with understanding the conflict itself. What are people fighting over? We're going to look at two very exciting and very, shall we say, current situations, one being the battle over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the question of this sacred site and who should occupy it and does it even belong to the people who claim it, and then the Iranian situation. the threat of Iran and their claims and what they may do and may not do. So that's going to be tomorrow morning. But now we want to look at the subject of the causes. Let me tell you a story that is often told in the Middle East. You have to think with a Middle Eastern mind about this. The story goes that once upon a time there was a crocodile setting himself on the banks of the Nile. And along comes a scorpion out of the desert. The scorpion comes up to the crocodile and says, friend crocodile, why don't you do me a favor? I need to get across the Nile and I can't swim. So if I could climb on your back and you take me across the Nile, that would be a very good thing. After all, we are friends, are we not? The crocodile said, now wait a minute. You think I'm stupid? I don't know how good of friends we are, but let me just say, if I took you out in the water and you stung me, I'd drown. The scorpion said to the frayed crocodile, think about it. If I stung you and you drowned, I'd drown too. I wouldn't do that. The crocodile thought about that and he said, that makes pretty good sense. So off they go out in the water. But no sooner did they get almost to the middle of the Nile that the scorpion got agitated and he strung the crocodile. And down they began to sink and the crocodile says, this doesn't make any sense. Why would you do such a thing? What reason could there be? And the scorpion said, there is none. This is the Middle East. That plays real well in the Middle East. They all understand that. So how do we make sense of a senseless situation? What possibility would two people, supposedly from the same source in history, who have every reason to live together in peace, or destroy one another, why wouldn't they do it? Why can't they share? Why can't they, as Rodney King said so long ago, just all get along? Why can't we do that? Now, when we come to the Middle East, we talk about signs of the times, lots of different signs. Baghdad, we've already had our sign with. Of course, Jerusalem now is a prominent sign. Damascus is in the news because of the riots there and the 2,000 killed under the Syrians. But Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day, he said, how is it that you can discern the appearance of the sky? How is it that you can go outside and you can say, it's going to rain today? Well, in Israel, it's pretty easy. There's a rain cycle. So they know when the month comes, it's about time for rain. But you can also see if it's going to be a warm day or if it's going to be a hot breeze. They became masters at that. And they needed to know that because it helped them with certain things they were doing. but he says more importantly knowing what the weather's like you know in terms of the climate is knowing what the weather is like spiritually morally in terms of God's program and plan he says how can you discern the appearance of the sky you cannot discern the signs of the times because God clearly gave them in his word and when they started to appear they should have known and he was one of the chief signs the sign of the coming of Messiah Now, the sign we want to look at, and we will be looking at later, is Jerusalem itself, because that focuses on Israel. And it focuses on the Middle East conflict, because the Middle East conflict, while it's over there, has also come over here. Most of us here were around at 9-11. There's probably some younger people already now since 10 years ago who may not have been there. To them it's just something, but it's not reality. Most of us, we know when we were attacked and the Middle East conflict came home to us. So we live in the times of the signs. There are signs all around us of things that are happening. You can't turn on the news and not begin to have something happen to the pit of your stomach and say, what does all this mean? We've never seen things like this in history. Are the prophets true? Are the things people are saying really going to happen? And so in order to understand the Middle East conflict, the first thing we need to have is a proper worldview. If you come to the Middle East conflict with the wrong lenses, you look at it As a politician does. You'll think as a politician does. We just have to bring diplomacy into it. Let's just all get along. If we talk enough, and make concessions enough, and apply enough pressure, then things will go our way. But, you know, this isn't a political problem. It's not a national problem. It's a religious problem. And you're never going to get religious people to change because their eternal destiny is tied to this. And so they just dig in deeper, become more fanatical. If you look at it from their position, from religious worldview, then you have another problem. Now it depends on what religion you're in. Because one religion sees it this way, another religion sees it that way, and they don't even talk with each other. If you look at it from a sociological point of view, Then you say, well, this is a problem because people are underprivileged. Let's just give them more stuff or they're uneducated. Let's give them more knowledge and then it'll be all right. But some of the most educated and also the most wealthy people are those who sponsor terrorism. It doesn't solve the problem at all. Lots and lots of money has been pumped into this and it just goes into the pockets of the leaders of these regimes. We have to look at this from the proper perspective. There are five ways to view our world. Secular worldview, which means God's not included, what I can see is what I believe. Religious worldview, I've already described, and that depends again on man as the center of the interpretation based on his belief about the world and how it came into being. Political worldview is simply that, and that is based on how it benefits you. Most of our politicians are so busy trying to get re-elected so they can finally do something that they never do anything, and it's a big problem. Atheistic worldview, God is not there, so everything has to be explained by some other means, and you know the problem with that is you can't explain it. I always ask atheists, would you rather live in an atheist neighborhood or in a Christian neighborhood? Because in the end, You'd rather live with someone who has morals and values and standards and loves their enemies than the guy who, you know, it's all sourced out of his own experience and the culture. Finally, there's the biblical worldview. And we're not going to look at these other ones. We're going to look at the biblical worldview because the biblical worldview is going to give us an ability to begin to understand this. Now, the basic components of a biblical worldview is that all of what we know is based on the Bible is absolute truth. This came from a God who designed and created this world and created us for this world. He has a plan from the very beginning. He is working out according to his own purpose. It is predetermined and therefore it is going to end up exactly the way he determines it to be. And when we get on board with him and understand the way he's going, then things begin to make more sense. Not only in history, but in our lives as well. So a biblical worldview mandates that the Bible, whose origin and history is centered in the Middle East, because it all started there and it's all going to end up there, concerns the people of Israel and the nations, is completely reliable and relevant. We can trust it. It makes sense. Now, the biblical worldview, shall we say, maintains that there is an omnipotent creator superintending the course of civilization and history. All of this stuff matters. When you turn on the television, you see something happening in the Arab Spring, in the Egyptian Revolution, in the Libyan Revolution, and you see that happening in other places, and things in the Sudan, and things happening with the Palestinians and the Israelis, and now with the Syrians and with others. What does that mean? Well, you have to go to the instruction book and then you see there's a plan. All of these countries are mentioned in one way or another in that plan. And you see how God is moving all the events of the world to include them in that plan and ultimately bring about His good purpose. Without that, you simply say, I don't have any idea what's going on. The whole world's coming apart. Can't somebody fix it? But if you understand what God's doing, you understand how that fix is coming. because it's right on schedule. So, as we look at the causes of the Middle East conflict, there is a scriptural cause, there is a secular cause, and there is a spiritual cause. By spiritual cause I mean religious cause, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, these types of things. But we want to focus on the scriptural cause. I can only do so much at the Unite. I'm going to give you a lot of information, but I've written two books which will give you more information, and those are available over at the Church Bookstore. One is called Unholy War. It kind of gives you the truth by the headlines. The other is called Fast Facts in the Middle East Conflict. And it's written from this biblical worldview, but it's not written necessarily for Christians. It's written for a secular audience, but it's written to give them the truth because the truth only comes from the Scriptures. So you get the details there. Now let's look at the scriptural cause. To do that we go to the Bible itself. In Amos chapter 3 verse 2 we read this. You only have I known among all the families of the earth. He's speaking to the people of Israel. Now, what's the matter with God? Is God limited? He only knows about one. What about all the rest? That's not what it's saying at all. The word he uses in Hebrew is the word Yadah. It's a term that means distinguishing a selective love. God knows about the rest, but he particularly knows about these. You know about all the kids and other people's families. You may know about many of the kids that are here, but you especially know about your own. You know where they are. They're going out or they're messing around. You know right now where they are because you know them especially because they're yours. And that's what God is saying. Israel is a chosen people. Alright? Now, that choice was not because of anything in them. There was nothing worthy about them. In fact, if you looked at them, they were the least desirable of all the people probably on the face of the earth. It was just one man, Abraham, who was a pagan at the time, who was chosen by God for this purpose. So God explains to Israel, in Deuteronomy chapter 7 verses 7 and 8, the Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, you were the fewest of all the peoples. God wasn't playing the numbers game. He wasn't looking for the crowd. He wasn't saying, you know, there's more of you so the majority counts, I'll go with you. That's the way politicians have played this Middle East conflict for a long time. There's more Arabs, they've got the oil, let's favor them. And after all, who are the Jews? There's only about 13 million of them in the world. They don't vote for us anyway. Some Republican administrations have said that in the past. Now, the Lord says He loved them and kept the oath which He swore to their forefathers. It started with God. It's all about God. And it's more about what He wants to do through these people than what these people what to do themselves. He says you are a holy people to the Lord your God not because of any innate goodness or righteousness in them. In fact they weren't that. It's because he set them apart for himself and he's holy. So he said I've chosen you to be a people for my possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth so that by being separate and distinct and reflecting me and my standards and my laws, the world will see what I am like and how I want to run this world and how they can have a relationship with me. And so this relationship was at the forefront of everything he did. When he chose Abram, Genesis 18-19, he said, I have chosen him, knowing that he may command his children and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. In other words, this one man who didn't know God, who was a pagan, became a believer in God. And then became one who was chosen by God so that he might make God known to others. And although he was just one, he would become many. And through his faithfulness in teaching his children and them teaching their children, it would go on until the whole nation would be a nation that represented God. It started with a child whose name was Isaac, Yitzhak. He wasn't the first of Abraham's children. He tried to work it out himself, his own way, and have children through first trying to adopt one of his servants and then trying to have it with his wife's handmaid. All these things caused problems and God said, I'm going to give to your barren wife by grace. You realize, Israel is a miracle. Here's a woman who couldn't have children. And it's a miraculous birth that brought that nation into being. And it's the same way that the Savior of that nation, the Messiah, came into being. He was also in a very miraculous birth. But he said, I'll establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. My covenant I will establish with Isaac. Now, he had a brother, half-brother, his name was Ishmael. But the covenant was not named with Ishmael. And of course, who do the Arab peoples claim descent from today? Ishmael. But you know what? The Quran is written very differently. Of course, it was written in the 6th century or maybe 7th century AD. This is written back in the 15th century BC. But nevertheless, the Koran says it wasn't Isaac, it was Ishmael. It was Ishmael the covenant was given to him. It was Ishmael that Abraham took to Mount Moriah. Well, very different things. So you can't believe both the Bible and the Koran. You have to choose. Now the Abrahamic covenant was a covenant God made with Abraham. It's an agreement, a legal document. And this Abrahamic covenant deals with a land and a seed and a blessing. Each one of these become a separate covenant. So we have one called the Land Covenant, which was made again, ratified by Moses, when he had his parting words to the Israelites in the plains of Moab. And then we have a covenant called the Davidic Covenant. The seed of Abraham became royalty, who would sit on the throne forever. That was the Davidic line. And then there's a final blessing, a spiritual blessing that comes from this, because Abraham was told I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Genesis chapter 12 and verse 3. And that blessing ultimately for all of us comes through the Jewish people. So if the Jewish people continue and get what God intended for them to have and they become believers in God through their Messiah then they will be the conduit for blessing and salvation for the rest of this world And that in fact happened through one Jewish person who was born and went to a cross and died. His name was Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus the Messiah. And he brought about a new covenant which was promised back in the book of Jeremiah chapter 31 which would now include all of the non-Jews, all of the Gentiles in this plan of God. Now, there are land promises made in the Abrahamic Covenant. Remember, the Middle East conflict, at least for the Israelis and the Palestinians, is a conflict over land. Whose land is it? You've got Palestinians living there and Israelis living there and they both claim the same turf. It's not that you can chop it up and make a Palestinian state over here and a state of Israel over here, because if you look at the Palestinian map, It's all of Israel. It doesn't have an Israel. All of the places that are named as Israeli cities are Palestinian cities. I mean, there's no sharing at all. It's replacement. So whose land was it? Well, Genesis 12, 7, God says, I'll give to your descendants this land, and then He says, all the land which you see, I'll give to them forever. Genesis 13, and then Genesis 17, He says, all the land of your sojourns, all the land of Canaan. There's a specified place. And some people say, you know, isn't God an imperialist? God ran out these other people and did this. Well, it's not like that. And neither is Israel imperialistic. Israel's not interested in anybody else's land. They're not interested in expanding their territory and conquering Syria and Egypt and Jordan. They just want to survive in the land that was given to them. And that's the only land God gave to them. He didn't say He could have anything else. He has very poorly defined borders. Now, in Genesis 16, we hear about Ishmael. And here, it's said that he will be a donkey of a man, a wild man. He'll live out in the desert. His hand will be against everyone, everyone's hand will be against him. In other words, there will always be unrest and tribal warfare going on with his descendants. And he will dwell in the presence of all his brethren. That's the way the King James text reads. Now the King James is the 400th anniversary of the King James text. It's probably one of the best translations ever made. It's a revered, it's a time proven translation. But it's not always right. And in this case, the translation does not give the right impression. It makes it seem like that these people the Ishmaelites, the descendants of the Ishmaelites, the Arab peoples, were to live with the Jews in their land. But if you look at the actual translation, this word al-pnei kol ha'am yesh gav, yesh, something like that, I can't see the point, yesh fo. means they will dwell or live, and here's the literal Hebrew, before the face of all his brothers. Now how would we understand that? Well, it literally means across from or opposite to. Some of our other translations make this clear. In other words, to the east of, is another good translation. So if the Israelites occupy this land, which we clearly have the boundaries of, then if they're going to live to the east of them, the Ishmaelites occupy this land. not with them, but to the east of them, or opposite to them, or across from them. So there's no promise here that the Jews and the Arabs will co-exist in the same land. It wasn't given to both of them. And one of the things we see is that when Abram had this son, Isaac, 40 years after his first statement of faith, when he looked into the stars and counted to him for righteous because he believed God, He was tested with respect to that faith, and he was to take his son Isaac, his only son, whom he loved, and take him to the mountains of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering to the Lord. Well, God had never asked that of anyone, as far as we know in the Bible. He never, ever had human sacrifice in the equation. Never intended. The only human sacrifice was a voluntary one, and that was when he himself came and offered himself for our sins. But here, He's supposed to offer his son. And when they get to the place, Isaac looks around and says, where's the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham says, this is pure faith. The Lord will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering. God will provide it. I don't know where it's going to come from, but he'll do it. And here is Mount Moriah, this high mountain in the area of Jerusalem. And in Genesis 22, this is what he was told to do, to offer it. We know at the last moment, Aram was called the thicket, Abraham saw it, he took it, he offered it in place of his son Isaac. The first substitutionary atonement in the Bible. Someone took the place of someone else who was supposed to be offered. And that's the whole Gospel. Our sins require us to pay the penalty of death. The wages of sin is death. As the pastor said earlier, either you pay it or someone else pays it. If you pay it, you're finished. You're condemned by that. But if someone else steps in and voluntarily pays it and takes your place, then of course you receive the benefits of what they've done. And that's what happened here. And they saw the ram, they offered it up, and then we have a statement made, Genesis 22, 14, they called the name of that place, the Lord will provide. We say in English, Jehovah Jireh, Adonai Jireh, in Hebrew, but it says, as it is said to this day, in the Mount of the Lord it will be provided. Well, the Mount of the Lord is the place where in time the temple was built, it's the place where God provided for salvation, because on that very mountain a cross was erected. And Jesus himself was the one, the Lamb or Ram of God who took away the sin of the world. Now, this is what we find. This angel of the Lord called Abraham and said, you shall possess the gate of your enemies and in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. The gate of his enemies would be those in that land in which he was a foreigner. They were an enemy to him and he would possess that. And ultimately through that possession he would bless everyone else. Now in time, that Mount of Moriah became a threshing floor where a man named Arunah or Ordam would bring all the threshed grain, throw it up in the air with a big pitchfork, the wind would take away the chaff and the good grain would fall and that's how they gathered stuff up to make their bread. And because God at one point was going to judge Jerusalem and the angel of judgment stood at this place and David prayed and God heard him and averted that judgment from the city, David came to that place and he built an altar there. But in order to build the altar, he had to buy the land in order to build the altar. And he came to Arunah and he actually purchased this threshing floor. The Bible tells us that. It says that David bought the threshing floor for 50 shekels of silver and built an altar to the Lord there. Now what does that tell us? It tells us that this place that became the place where the temple would be built, the Temple Mount, was actually bought by Israel. There's a title deed to that property. And when we come to the first temple built by David's son Solomon, it explains that. It says that Solomon began to build the house in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah at the very place of the threshing floor that his father David had bought. So it's a clear historical document. You're going to see tomorrow if you come to our meeting that the Palestinians as well as the whole Islamic world denies there was ever a temple there. It never happened. Jews don't have any claim to Jerusalem. There's not a single stone indicating Jewish history in the whole place. Which is why I encourage you to go there and see with your own eyes so you don't fall into that kind of political deception. In time the second temple was built. And then we understand when it was destroyed and others dealt like the Muslims on that site, why the Temple Mount, this 35 acres, is the most volatile acreage on earth. It's become this catalyst. And so Jerusalem, according to Luke 21, 24, will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled. We're living in the times of the Gentiles. and we're seeing these signs of the times that indicate that might come to a conclusion because before it comes to a conclusion one of these Gentiles is going to come about and rule this world and bring conflict to this planet and the focus of his wrath and attention is going to be on Jerusalem and if we don't see that same thing happening today then we don't have eyes to see Now, when is this covenant that was promised to Abraham fulfilled? Well, quite clearly it's in the future. It's never been fulfilled in the past. In fact, all of these covenants that grow out of the Abrahamic covenant find their ultimate fulfillment in the Kingdom of God promised in the future. Now, there are aspects of the New Covenant, part of the Abrahamic covenant, that are fulfilled with us today through Jesus. And when we come to passages like Romans chapter 11, and I won't read all of that because time will get away from us, but it says here that there are branches. These branches are the Jews. And then the natural branches, they belong to this tree. There are Gentiles who are wild olives, or wild olive branches that are grafted in. And there is a root. The root is the Abrahamic covenant. That's those promises God made to the Jewish people, but also for them to bless all the rest of the world. And so we see this kind of happening. And then we see the tree itself, or the blessings of that covenant, for Jew and Gentile. And we in the church partake of those blessings. We have a real stock in this whole Middle East conflict in a sense, because what happens to the Jewish people affects us. If God's promises are not fulfilled to them as he promised, what chance do we have? In other words, we're grafted to the tree, we're a limb. But that limb depends on the Jewish people and the promises made to them which are the root. And if you saw that down, then you're sawing the limb that you're sitting on. And the result is we have no hope. So we really have to understand this. Now the popular view today in Christendom, and I spell that D-U-M-B by the way, is that modern Israel has no right to the land. Here is a statement, this Knox Seminary open letter was written by two friends of mine, I know both of them quite well, and they went to seminary with one of them. He changed his views, the other one never had the views, but This came out of this school, James Kennedy School, by the way he didn't sign this letter, interestingly enough, but many pastors and others have, and their statement is, the entitlement of any one ethnic or religious group to territory in the Middle East, called the Holy Land, cannot be supported by scripture. No New Testament writer perceives a regathered ethnic Israel in the land. bad Christian theology regarding the Holy Land contributed to the tragic cruelty of the Crusades in the Middle Ages and bad Christian theology is today attributing to secular Israel a divine mandate to conquer and hold Palestine. This is a loaded statement. First, they don't use the word Israel, they use the word Palestine as though these were the same and they're not. Just historically, Palestine was a term as far as we can tell, first used for the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD. He used it as a derisive term to punish the Jews because of the second Jewish revolt which he had put down. In fact, he changed the whole, not only the name of the country, but he changed the name of Jerusalem as well. From Jerusalem to Elia Kapitolina, after his own family and background. And this name applied to anyone living in the country. In fact, at the time, it applied to the Jewish people. By the time we come to our modern time, in which we have both Arabs and Jews living in this country called Palestine, they're both Palestinians. There's Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs. When the state of Israel is established in 1948, there are almost 700,000 Palestinian Arabs that come into the new state of Israel, which is now the Israeli Jews rather than Palestinian Jews, and they're now Israeli Arabs rather than Palestinian Arabs, and the names change. Those left outside simply are left with the term Palestinian. But most of them didn't like that term because they said that was a Jewish term. And so they preferred to be called Jordanians, or Syrians, or Muslims, or have some tribal affiliation, but that changed. Because they don't recognize it, they simply use the word Palestine. You know the word Palestine is not in your Bible? Well, it appears in the King James Bible that it refers to the Philistines there, not to the Palestinians. This is a modern term. But to make these kind of statements is unfair because it simply is not true. Now why would they say something like this? Well, let's look at Israel's right to the land. I want to focus on this because this is what the scripture says and we want to look to the scripture. Now, the basis for Israel's right to the land. There are three. A biblical basis, a political basis, and a humanitarian basis. We're going to look at the biblical basis. The political basis deals with different types of events, like the Balfour Declaration and promises made to the Jewish people, things coming out of war in which they took land in a defense. And they gained from the defensive war humanitarian bases, the fact that they came out of Eastern Europe, the Holocaust almost wiped out the entire Jewish population. The only safe haven was this land where already for 2,000 years Jewish communities had existed. And so they came there and they were expelled from Arab countries. 800,000 of them with nothing but the clothes on their back. And they came to this land. But that's another story. You can see that in my book. The biblical basis for Israel's right to the land is that the Jewish people claim a right to the land based on the Bible. The Bible is a legal document. It records the Jewish people's deed to the land of Israel. The fact of this is what produced the modern movement known as Zionism. Zionism is simply that Zion, another name for Jerusalem, but also a name for the possession of the Jewish people of the land, is that that's the homeland of the Jewish people. If you believe that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, you're a Zionist. And if you're a Christian and believe that, you're a Christian Zionist. Nothing wrong with that. It's not a dirty word. Some people think it is. But it's the homeland of the Jewish people. Now, is the land of Israel a holy land? Can we say that? I mean, with all the blood that's been shed there, with all of the things that have happened from inquisitions and crusades, can we call it a holy land? Well, the land of Israel is a holy land because God chose it and designated it to be the place where a holy people would fulfill their appointed purpose in the plan of God. It's holy because God said it's holy, because He intended it to be holy. He chose it to be holy. He designed it for that, to be set apart to Him. That's what holy means. Do you know that if you are the people of God yourself, by faith in His Son, have a relationship with Him, you're holy. Now you may not feel holy, you may not look holy, your husband or wife may not certainly think that you're holy, but God does because he sees you through Christ and he says you're set apart to me. So you're a saint even. You don't even have to go through the canonization process. You're already a saint. because God declares you to be one. Well, that's the way Israel is. This identity has remained unchanged throughout history despite exile from the land because God's purpose has not yet been fulfilled. For this reason, the Jewish people continue to view the land as holy because they continue to strive to live up to their divine calling to be a holy people. Well, not all of them, but most who are religious would say this, which they believe cannot be fully achieved apart from living in the land in relationship with God. So we can be I'm not going to put it, we can be holy to God and live in any country. But for them, they were designed to be a holy people in a holy place. And they can't really fulfill their destiny unless they are there. So it's a unique situation for them. So let's look at the biblical basis for Israel's right to the land. First, God promised the land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to all of their descendants. The Bible, of course, says this quite clearly. In the Old Testament, it says the land we know as Israel was given to these descendants. And every Old Testament prophet except Jonah speaks of a permanent return to the land of Israel by the Jews. Nowhere in the New Testament are these Old Testament promises changed or negated. I think it's amazing when someone says nowhere in the New Testament does it talk about this. As though the only Bible we have is the New Testament. I have people all the time say, well I'm a New Testament Christian. You say, what does that mean? You only follow one third of the Bible? Because see, the Old Testament, the First Testament is more unfulfilled prophecy than the Old Testament there is in the New. That was the Bible of Jesus and the early church. If we throw out the Old Testament, we've thrown out two thirds of the Bible. We've thrown out the promises of God. We've thrown out all the purpose and plan of God that's explained to us. All these things are so important. The New Testament is not trying to reinvent the wheel as though it says you want to know about these things? That's why you have the Old Testament. They don't call it the Old Testament. It's simply the beginning. The New Testament simply reinforces and explains the fulfillment of things that were promised in the Old Testament, but it doesn't change it. It enhances it. But why do you need to talk about all of these things concerning Israel again when the focus of the New Testament is how the church is going to get started? You already have it there. So go to volume 1 and look it up. So it's amazing when people think that the New Testament has to say everything the Old Testament already said. That we have a land covenant clearly given to Israel. And Deuteronomy 30 talks about it. It talks about Moses looked at Israel before he even got into the promised land and said, when you get there, you're going to mess up. And you're going to be thrown out. And you're going to go among the nations. And all these terrible things are going to happen to you. And while that happens to you because of your sin, God will still be with you. He will preserve you. It's a miracle that Israel exists. How do these people exist? They've been thrown out of their land so many times. They've been assimilated into other nations. They've been persecuted, nearly destroyed from the face of the earth, and yet they exist. And they're back in their land. They have revival languages over 2,000 years old. How can that be? There's no parallel to that in history, by the way. Because God was with them. He said, I will restore you from your captivity and have compassion on you. And if you are outcast to the ends of the earth, even from there God will gather you. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed and you shall possess it and He will prosper and multiply you more than your fathers. So this is the future promise. But let me ask you a question. This is a legal document. This is a contract God made. I talked to a contract lawyer And we certainly have lawyers here and they can affirm this, but if you have a legal contract made between two parties it requires a meeting of the minds. What that means is you can't have ambiguity. You can't have one person think the contract means one thing and another person thinks it means another. You have to understand what it says and agree that you both accept it on those terms. And so when God makes a covenant with Abraham or David or any of the others and he says, this is what I'm saying and they say well I understand that to mean you're going to give us this land and he's going to come to the Jewish people and he's also going to say he's going to do that forever and God can read their minds and he knows that's what they believe but it's saying God really intended to say well you know I know that's what you thought I said What I really meant was, when the church comes along, we'll give it all to the church. It's not going to be literal, it's going to be spiritual. And heaven's really the land I'm talking about. And all this is going to change. But they never knew that. They believed God and trusted God for a covenant. Well, that's not a meeting of the minds. That is deception. And the deception's on the part of God because He knows what they're thinking. And He makes the contract with them. And the fact is, God doesn't change his mind. He doesn't change his purpose. He doesn't go to some of the people and replace them as though Israel had no significance or future. So the second thing here is God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people as an internal inheritance. Not just for, well, until they get kicked out of the land or until some other people show up. No, it's theirs as long as God intends. And God intends that as long as the earth is here. He says, for the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. What does forever mean? Well, we'll explain that in just a moment. Ezekiel 37, 25, as we look at the future, he says, and they shall live on the land that I gave to Jacob, my servant, in which your fathers lived, and they will live on it, they and their sons, and their sons' sons, forever. Nothing has changed as we come to this time of the captivity and then after the captivity. Now Jeremiah in chapter 7 verse 7 says, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the place or the land I gave to your fathers forever and ever. And he says it again in chapter 21 verse 5, turn now and from your evil way and from the evil of your deeds and dwell on the land which the Lord has given to you and your fathers forever and ever. Now the term he uses here is the term in Hebrew, I think I put the Hebrew up there, there it is, minolam b'adolam. forever and ever. The older the time that term is used is when it speaks of God's eternality. So he uses that of himself, which cannot change, which is really forever. God is forever. And now he uses it in terms of the promise of the land to the Jewish people. There could not be a stronger term to assert the permanence of the land promise. Now, third, God guaranteed habitation and total enjoyment of the land, but he conditioned it on Israel's faithfulness. And this is something many have failed to understand. God said it quite clearly. Most of us who have been in churches that did not understand a future for Israel Understand the past of Israel very well. Israel's sinned. Israel's an example of all the things negative. All the curses came upon Israel. They've killed Christ after all. So everything bad is what the Jew is about. And down through the history of Christendom, that has often been the case. We have a lot to answer for in our treatment of the Jewish people down through history. Because of that kind of attitude. They're a wandering Jew. They're a cursed people. Burn down their synagogues. It was Martin Luther. He said, I you to Odeh Yudish heresy, so Shtochstein, Eisen, Twelfelhard, Dasmukh, Kerev, Eisen, Zubaveganetz. He said a Jew or a Jewish heart is so wood, stone, iron, devil, hard to no way be moved. Don't even try to give them the gospel. They're enemies of God. I like Luther in some areas, but don't like him in this one. And he was wrong about that. But God had strong things to say about his own people. He disciplined them. And why have they suffered more than any other people on the face of the earth? Because they have a unique relationship with God. To whom much is given, much will be required. So if you say, what's going on here? It's that God has put them on a showcase that he's still with them, he's still working with them. But now he's disciplining them. He's punishing them. But if he punishes them, he can also restore them and bless them. So he says here, I am with you, declares the Lord, to save you. I will destroy completely all those nations where I have scattered you. Only I will not destroy you completely. I will chasten you and by no means leave you unpunished. So don't think because Israel has suffered as it has, that God's discipline is against them, that somehow God is against them. This is all part of his plan and purpose to ultimately bring them to repentance as a nation. Now we've seen the worldwide scattering of the Jews. Ezekiel depicts it as a whole field of dead bones and that's almost the way the Jewish nation had become in history. Deuteronomy 28-64, the Lord will scatter you among the people from one end of the earth to the other. Ezekiel 22, 15, I'll scatter you among the nations, disperse you in the countries. Amos 9, 9, among all the nations, like corn is sifted in a sieve. Ezekiel 36, 19, I'll scatter them among the nations. They were dispersed. These terms scattering, the word diaspora, it's like taking seed and just throwing it to the wind. How do you recover from that? Because we're bound to our nationality and our culture and our language when all that has changed. and our children are taken from us, and another language, another country, like happened in Assyria, it happened in Babylon, it happened in Egypt, it happened throughout all of Eastern Europe. How do you recover from that? But you do because God is with you. But here's the explanation, we need to understand it. Israel and the land, during the times of the Gentiles, which runs parallel to another time called the period of indignation, we read about it in Daniel. Israel is In the land, but also out of the land. Captive in land. Only a small number return. And even when they're in the land, they're not in control of the land. The nations are in control of them. And so there's only been a short time in Israel's history that they've actually had independent existence there. But in the future, This is going to continue, because the times of the Gentiles continue, and God's wrath continues, but there's going to come a time when the Lord Jesus comes back, Israel's Messiah, they're going to repent and turn to Him, a nation reborn today, and then all these things will change. The times of the Gentiles will end, because the world leader, the Antichrist, the Gentile, will be dethroned. and put into the lake of fire. And instead a Jew, the Lord Jesus, will sit on the throne ruling over this world and the nation of Israel serving with him as will the Gentile nations that are redeemed. So there's a whole new situation coming. But now, now Israel is under this time of discipline. And that's why life in the land under divine discipline is not so good. Israel is back in the land, in part, but look what it suffers. It suffers from all the enemies on every side. God has not defeated those enemies. He is using those enemies as part of the discipline. But God says there are two regatherings. One is to the land, which is physical. So Israel is a secular country. They are in unbelief. Don't misunderstand. There are Jewish believers there. I know of at least 120 Jewish believing congregations. Some very strong Bible believing things. Witnessing is going on throughout the land. There are some very incredible things happening. Also with the Arabs. the Palestinians, but that's a physical return that's happened in mass in the land of Israel, a national return, but is not yet a spiritual return. So they come to the land, but not to the Lord, but they come to the Lord when they're in the land, as we see in Romans chapter 11. Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 29 and 31 talk about this. From there you will seek the Lord your God, you will find Him. When you are distressed and all these things have come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord, listen to Him. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant which you swore to your fathers. God has kept those people for that future time to fulfill all His promises to them. He has to because He is God. It's not because of them, it's because of Him. And we read about this in Zechariah 12, 9 and 10. We'll come about in that day, the day that Israel is attacked, Jerusalem in particular. The Lord shows up to fight for Israel, that he will set about to destroy all those nations that come against Jerusalem. In fact, as we'll see tomorrow, the Bible says, in that day all the nations of the earth will come against Jerusalem and do battle. You're talking about a city, almost a million people, but that's just one city, a tiny city, by standards. Why would every nation of the world come against it? Well, in the past, it seemed like an incredible thing to say. Today, we can see that the whole Middle East conflict, all of the hopes of democracy in the Middle East, all of the hopes of peace for the world, which affect all the politicians and all of the economic situation everything else depends on Jerusalem and the negotiations over it and if the Jews are not going to get out of the eastern part of Jerusalem and get it to the Palestinians who never had it in the first place then you know those borders are not being respected our president administration says you gotta go back to the pre-67 day borders which means you gotta get out of the eastern part of Jerusalem The Jordanians that occupied the 48-67, but nevertheless, you've got to do that. And if you don't do that, then what? Well, how about a multinational peacekeeping force with the United Nations, which is all nations, enforcing that peace? Who knows? We don't know. But we can see for the first time in history how such a thing could happen, and why it could happen. And so the word of God is bringing us to that place in history where we may be on the verge of seeing these things occur. Fourth, God's promises to the Jewish people are irrevocable regardless of unbelief. So that's very important. The land is theirs regardless of whether they believe or not. Because it's not about them, it's about God and his purposes. Listen to this. God's promise to the Jewish people. Leviticus 26, 44 and 45. When they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. He brought them out of Egypt when they were largely in unbelief. Most of those perished in the wilderness. He did that because that's God. Does exile from the land mean loss of the land? Ezekiel 11 says, That says the Lord, though I remove them far away among the nations and scatter them among the countries, I will gather you from the peoples, I will send you out of the countries where you have been scattered, I will give you the land of Israel. Even when they were in a time of judgment and discipline, still God said, I'll take care of you. Now, the book of Jeremiah has a very unique promise and I remember a time in which a pastor decided he would preach on this passage about the irrevocability of God's promises. And he put it on the sign in front of the church, the message title, and it was, How to Destroy the Jews. Well, in this particular community, there was some very prominent Jewish people, a number of synagogues. That Sunday morning, on the front row where a lot of the Christians don't sit. There were members of the B'nai B'rith and the Jewish Federation and rabbis all waiting to see what this Christian pastor was going to say about how to destroy the Jews. So he got up to read the text upon which he would preach, and these are the words he read from Jeremiah 31. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, and stirs up its sea so that its waves roar, the Lord of hosts is his name. If this order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then the offspring of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will cast off Israel for all that they have done, declares the Lord. So if you can change the sun and moon and stars and the foundations of the earth and everything else, only then will Israel lose its promise with God. And one of the rabbis in the front row, after hearing that, you know, kind of elbowed his friend and said, I think it's going to be alright. So, you can understand, it is alright, because of what God has said. Now, in the New Testament, we have the same statement made. Romans 11, 28, 29. From the standpoint of the Gospel, they are enemies for your sake. Now remember, this is a Jew writing about his own people. This is not anti-Semitism. This is reality. Paul was a Jew that believed in Jesus, and Jews that didn't believe in Jesus persecuted Paul. But this was a family fight, okay? But he said, if you believe in Jesus, the Jew, as your Messiah and Lord, you're going to have adversaries from among his own people. Because they rejected him when he was here, they're going to reject you if you follow him. But he says, from the standpoint of God's choice, those same ones are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Okay? For the gifts and callings of God are evocable. Now what is that saying? It's saying to us, it doesn't mean these people are saved. It doesn't mean that God is going to go back and sort of retroactively save everybody who is Jewish simply means that because a person is a Jew he has a promise and it is related to God's ultimate purpose and that purpose is related to the land and related to what he wants to do for the whole nation and God isn't going to change or turn away from that purpose just because they don't believe Because God still has that purpose. Their belief doesn't change anything in God's purpose. But in the end, it's God's purpose to bring a remnant of that nation out of unbelief to belief. And make them a trophy of His grace. So Israel has a right to the land because God's chosen place has not changed, God's chosen people have not changed, and God's clear promise has not changed. And because of all of this, the land of Israel is the epicenter for the final fulfillment of God's plan for planet Earth. If that's the case, you can understand why it's a center for global conflict to those who oppose God. This is the biblical worldview. If you understand that, now you shouldn't have any problem making sense of what's happening. A lot of it, we don't know how to solve the problem. Let me tell you, if there's a scriptural cause, there's a scriptural solution. And that's what we want to come to just for a moment. Real quick, let me just show you what's happening. There's a new antisemitism that targets Jews not as Jews but as the nation of Israel. So Israel as a nation is hated. And it's hated to a degree it's never been hated perhaps before. We've never seen this kind of antisemitism since the Holocaust. The Palestinians, their plan is not to share land with their neighbors. Their plan is to take over the land that belongs to Israel. We have no doubt of that. There was a phase plan adopted by the Palestine National Council way back in the early 70s. It said once it established the Palestine National Authority, that is the new Palestine state, will strive to achieve a union of the confrontation countries." That's all the Black Arrows, all the other countries that have attacked Israel in many wars in the past. It says, with the aim of completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory, that means the rest of the land, all of the land. as a step toward the road of comprehensive Arab unity. What that means is that we cannot have an illegitimate entity like Israel in the midst of this wonderful Islamic unity. They disrupted that unity. It's not about Jews, they say, oh Jews can live with us, that's fine. But they have to live as second class citizens called Demi, and they have to not have an independent state, it has to be an Islamic state under Islamic law. And then they can live. So this is what's there, and that's why David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, said there's no solution. We want the country to be ours, we want the country to be theirs. Have you ever seen two kids who want the same toy? Right now, Beyblades and things like this are real popular, and my grandsons like those. And I'll guarantee you there's one Beyblade that wins over the others. It's the little spinning toys that knock each other out of the little stadium. And they fight over that one because it's the winner toy. And that's the thing here. Now, we're in a situation where two of the Palestinian groups, Fatah and Hamas, have got a unity agreement. The leader of Fatah is Mahmoud Abbas, he took it over from Yasser Arafat. Khalil Mishael, the leader of Hamas, has been there taking it away from the spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin, who was assassinated. Look who Mahmoud Abbas is. He is the moderate. He is the conservative. He is the one the United States negotiates with because they can't negotiate with Hamas. I'll explain why in a minute. Here is Mahmoud Abbas. He is the co-founder of Fatah. He has been 40 years in the Palestinian leadership. He has doctorates from the University of Moscow. He got it by the way, disproving the Holocaust. He said it never happened. It was simply a Zionist plot to get the nations to allow Israel to come back to the country. He financed the Munich Massacre way back in 1971 or so when the Israeli Olympics were there at the Olympics. They were massacred, machine gunned down. He's the one who wrote the checks to the terrorists. He calls the Zionists an enemy and he praises terrorists. So he's really not the moderate he seems. We look at Hamas, here's something off their website, you look at it, you see a Star of David, and as the Star of David grows, something grows within it, in fact the Star of David disappears, and a mushroom cloud replaces it, simply saying that they want to destroy Israel. And that's their charter. Neither Fatah nor Hamas have ever, ever recognized the right of Israel to exist. They don't have a right to exist. Now Israel is giving up land after land after land with a concession. We just want to exist. We don't recognize your right to exist. How do you negotiate with that? you don't have to negotiate anymore because Mahmoud Abbas just last month went to the United Nations he applied for membership which is an act that requires unconditional unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state only a state can be accepted for membership so they are recognizing the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital because that's the demand and if that's granted it won't change one fact on the ground back in Israel But, it means that the world has allowed the Palestinians to have a state without negotiating with the Israelis. That's an impossibility, but that's what's happened. Now we can look at Israel and Iran. We'll look at that tomorrow in detail, but from the beginning, Iran said they wanted to destroy Israel. They wanted a nuclear weapon to do that. That was their stated goal. That was President Khatami. The current president has launched and now completed a nuclear program. And what does he say? We want to destroy Israel. Same thing. How would you like to live with that as your neighbor? Iran came to our United Nations and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Israel is responsible for 9-11. And through our government. It was all of us. Israel is responsible for the Middle East conflict. Israel is responsible for the world economic problems. It's all blaming Israel. And that's the way the world treats Israel. If there's something wrong, the finger is pointed at Israel. And the psalmist said that's what would happen. He gave them to the nations and those who hated ruled over them. And then Matthew 24 and 9 Jesus says we come to this time of tribulation. They'll deliver you to tribulation and kill you and you'll be hated by all nations on account of my name. These are the Jewish believers in his time but as we look forward into the tribulation these Jewish believers and probably others who believe in Jesus are treated in that way. So if we look at those who hate Israel today, look at the map. 1.5 billion Muslims as opposed to 6 million Jews. Anybody see any disparity there? Who is having a problem with survival? Who has a problem eating land? And by the way, that little spot that's Israel, you know, Less than half of that is possessed by the Jewish people. The rest is either Palestinian, supposedly called occupied territory, or it's been designated for dispute. Our president says you've got to pull back to the 67 day borders. You know what the 67 day borders are? You see this big high ground? That's the West Bank, and then Gaza's over here, the Golan Heights is above that. But if you were a military general, and you know you have to have the high ground, how would you like to have that belong to your enemy with all the countries around it signing with them, joining with them, and all you have is between 9 and 15 miles to defend yourself and be pushed into the Mediterranean Sea. This was stated by our own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff back in 1967. He said, the minimum required for Israel's defense includes most of the West Bank and the whole of Gaza and the Golan Heights. That's clear. And yet our administration today says give it all up. And Israel has already given up the Gaza Strip. So, well, let me just say we also have a problem from pastors and seminaries and Bible schools that accept Reformed Theology. Their method is something called covenant theology. And at least in one aspect of it, it dehistoricizes the promises made to Israel. In other words, it looks at historical and prophetic promises through a lens that's theological and turns them into something that's spiritual and soteriological. So that all those promises made in the Old Testament no longer apply to Israel. No longer are they literal promises. Here's an example. Here's a guy. He says an Israelite is anyone who believes in Jesus. And Israel is all those who believe in Jesus wherever they live. Today the Israelites are composed of believers and Jesus knows no national boundaries. Israel is now all over the world. But what happens to the promises? Well, they're all ours. But the problem is, God gave cursing and blessings. And what happens is, all the cursings stay with the Jews and all the blessings come to the Christians. That's not fair, is it? If you're going to take over all of the covenant, you might as well take the whole thing. So, Israel is eliminated, and this is something we call replacement theology. Well, we're at that time in history that time may be running out. When you look at the church and you understand how it looks at the Bible, or doesn't look at the Bible, and how it looks at God's own people, and God's plan for those people in relation to the rest of the world, who they're to bless, What we find is very appalling. 1 Peter 4, 17 says, it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. We need some housecleaning. God is working in that way. And if it begins with us first, what is the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? Well, let's look at the road map real quick in conclusion. Will there ever be peace in the Middle East? Will it ever be born there? Well, let me just say the only hope for peace was born in the Middle East. And his name is Jesus. And the Lord says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It may not happen in the Middle East in our lifetime. that we can have personal peace with God, who is in control of all of history, here and now, through faith in Jesus Christ. So may the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, and Pastor, I know you have some words to say.
Making Sense of the Middle East Pt 1
ស៊េរី FBC 2011 - Misc
Guest teacher Dr. Randall Price teaches message 1 of 2 of a series titled, 'Making Sense of the Middle East' during the Duluth Bible Church 2011 Fall Bible Conference.
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