The following sermon is brought to you by Capitol Community Church, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Capitol Community Church is a people awakened to a holy God. If you are searching for a new church home, or from out of town looking for a church to worship with, or simply seeking for answers, Please join us for worship at 1045 a.m. every Sunday morning and 6 o'clock p.m. for our evening service. If you have any questions, please email us at info at CapitalCommunityChurch.com. We pray this sermon will help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus Christ. Good evening. Glad to see you. Glad you're here tonight. Tonight I'm going to be speaking to a subject I think many are interested in by the attendance that's here tonight, a little bit more than usual. Tonight we are talking about what Christians should think about Israel, and by that I mean the current events of what is going on in the Middle East right now. Tonight I'm not planning on getting into the deep theological weeds between covenant theology, dispensational theology, all of that. That would take a lot more time, a lot more teaching to do, but I do want to address what's going on from a pastoral perspective. I want to speak to it In terms of the questions mainly that I've received over the past week from a number of you some even this morning people coming up and pointing out different verses and and asking all sorts of questions emails phone calls text messages all those sorts of things and so I've tried to to speak to the most frequently asked things, and I want to speak to these things as best as I can as it accords with the Word of God. I don't want to speak speculatively, though certainly some things are my personal opinion, but as always I want to try to speak in terms of what God says and what Scripture says. So with all that being said, let me pray for us and then I'll get started. Heavenly Father, we come to the throne of grace during these turbulent days in which we live, in which wars and rumors of wars are taking place, which seems like across the globe and at times it seems like we're on the precipice of another major world war. So Lord we in the midst of all this look to you the one who is sovereign and who is in control Lord the earth is yours as we saying this is our father's world The earth is yours and everything in it and you are sovereign and you have not stepped away But that you ordain all things according to the counsel of your will nothing that is transpiring right now has taken you by surprise and in fact is part of your very plan. As hard as it is for us to understand that. And so Lord, during this time, our faith and our confidence is not in the American government or the fact that an Atlantic Ocean sits between us and the Middle East. Our faith and confidence is in you. In Yahweh. In the living God. And Lord, we confess that we are a sinful people. A sinful people. And apart from divine grace, and apart from your mercy, we are no different than the terrorist that attacked last week. No different. We are sinners who've been saved by a great Savior. And so, Lord, let there be no room for pride in our hearts or self-righteousness, but, Lord, may we come humbly before you in these days, and may we be a praying people as we read things on the news and we see new reports and we see things escalating or de-escalating, may in everything we go to the throne of grace in prayer. May we look to you and may we be reminded to repent of our own sin and to walk uprightly before you. I pray, Lord, that you would help me now as I seek to navigate through these issues and give my speech wisdom. And may everything be done for your honor and your glory. In Christ's name, I pray. Amen. One thing I do want to say at the outset, I know that there's, within this body, there's a variety of different opinions on Israel and upon what's gone on in Israel over the past 70 years, a number of different opinions. And we need to be reminded that ultimately our unity is in Christ. Our unity is in the cross our unity is is in the fact that God has redeemed us as his people and You know, there's there there will be sometimes in in terms of cultural events political events There will be shades of gray where you disagree with other like-minded believers Sometimes that's hard for us to comprehend because we think well, you know, if somebody's thinking biblically, they're gonna think like me but but We're all in different degrees of maturity and sometimes current events, you know, they're hard to read. The newspaper, it doesn't always correlate with what you think the Bible is saying about what is happening in the news. So with all that being said, let me just give you a little history, which I think has been helpful for me as I've been thinking about this. Y'all remember Mark Coppinger? He came and preached here this summer. He was my ethics professor when I was in seminary. He wrote an article in 2012 in which he relayed a lot of the history of what has taken place in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine. But essentially, in the early 1900s, Jews begin to come back to Israel. And by 1947, they had purchased over 700 square miles of land within that region that we now call Israel today. So 700 miles, and then really, after World War II, there was great sentiment after the Holocaust that the Jews should have their own country. And so in 1948, May 15, 1948 to be specific, the nation of Israel was birthed. And on that day, five Arab nations, and I'm quoting Coppinger here, attacked the newborn state, intent on destroying her. Anticipating the invasion, many of the Arab professional class, so think the upper echelon of the Palestinians who lived in the land, exited the country confident that they could return to their property once Israel had been obliterated. They, along with the poorer Palestinians who fled or were pushed out during the war, were disappointed with the outcome and began immediately to insist on full repatriation and restoration. Reflecting in his memoirs on the situation, Syria's Prime Minister during that time observed, quote, since 1948, we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes, but we ourselves are the ones who encourage them to leave. only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return. The Palestinians left during the war and when they tried to come back the land had subsequently been divided up. So that's essentially what happened is that The war in 1948, you had a mass exodus of Palestinians, and when the war was won, essentially Israel said, this land is now ours. And the Palestinians that had left said, well, we have this claim to the land. So that's the nature of the disagreement. that is taking place. You hear about Palestinian refugees. You hear about them saying, look, we've been excluded from the land. That's what people are talking about. Now, subsequently, UN resolutions have demanded restoration and compensation to the Palestinians and for Israel to show, essentially, you know, to make some sort of restitution to the Palestinians. But that peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel has not occurred. So, Israel has made several offers, but those offers have been rejected through the years. All of them have been rejected. So, you know, it is interesting. You look at the number of Palestinians that live in, and I'll talk about these areas in a minute, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But you do wonder why other Muslim countries haven't allowed these Palestinians to come in to, for example, Egypt and other places. You know, why are these Palestinians simply told you have to stay in these confined spaces? And those confined spaces are the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The West Bank is the area right along the Jordan River, literally the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip is a little piece of land. It's a sliver of land, five miles wide and 25 miles long. It's basically 139 square miles. And within that area is a densely populated group of Palestinian people. It's over two million people within that little bitty area. And Israel controlled that area up until 2005. And Israel, now think about this, this is part of the nation of Israel. This little area is essentially a territory within Israel. And Israel handed over the reins, the government of this area to the Palestinians. in 2005 the 9,000 Jews who were living there subsequently left and in 2006-2007 that's when the group known as Hamas gained power and you know as I'm I'm not intimately related with all the details about how this happened. I do know that there's many Palestinians who do not support Hamas, that are against Hamas, but in 2006, 2007, Hamas gained power, ousted the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas has essentially politically controlled that area up until this day. And what you need to know about Hamas, this is where, this is why things are so volatile. is that Hamas as a political group is dedicated to the destruction and the annihilation of the nation of Israel. So think about that. This is a region within Israel where the political entity is devoted to the destruction of Israel. That's why there's so much tension. That's why there's this iron dome that Israel has set up to block the rockets that Hamas will shoot and has shot over the years. That's why there's so much, when we were over in Israel, there's IDF forces everywhere with their M4s out. ready to go because you have this taking place within the country. You have people, the Palestinian people, that are, some are sympathetic to Hamas, some are not, but the ones that are sympathetic to Hamas want the nation of Israel to be destroyed. So tonight, just in terms of helping us go through this, I have eight statements or points that I just want to go through with you, okay? And I want to look at this whole situation from a spiritual perspective, because I think that's what we always need to do. We always need to take a step back. CNN, Fox News, Drudge, everybody's focused on the political aspects, the national aspects. We need to take a step back and focus on what's going on spiritually, okay? So in so doing that, the first thing I wanna say is that Hamas and Hezbollah are agents of Satan. And I don't mince those words or that's not a qualification, that's a fact. We have all seen pure, unmitigated evil on the part of Hamas. A massacre, killing and raping of women, killing babies in their bed, beheading them. I've even seen them attacking some of their own Palestinian people that are trying to flee from the northern area of Gaza down to the southern area of Gaza. They've purposely launched rockets from civilian locations so that when Israel targets those rocket locations, more Palestinian civilians will die. So this is not a group that is even looking out for the best interest of their people. This is a group that is set on destruction and annihilation and murder of civilians. So how do we understand this? What's going on here? And this is something I've been thinking about all week. The fundamental issue is this. Ephesians 6.12, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. What Paul says in 1 Corinthians is that all the false religions are essentially fronts for demonic activity. In other words, Satan and the demons that operate, the rulers, authorities, and powers that operate underneath Satan, use the false religions in order to advance Satan's agenda. It was really interesting, I was reading in Daniel this past week, Daniel chapter 10, one of the angels was on a mission and he was confronted and delayed by a demon called the Prince of the Kingdom of Persia. You all remember this? There is a spiritual battle there. The title of this demon, the Prince of the Kingdom of Persia, indicates that that demon had a specific realm in which he operated. that he controlled this little area. And so what Satan does through demonic activity is he deceives people through false religions so that they will not worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And essentially, so many of these false religions and these cults, the story begins when one person has some sort of interaction with an angel. Have you all noticed this? So, Muhammad, he's the one guy of Islam. He's the one guy. And he says, I've received this new revelation from an angel, Joseph Smith, Mormonism. And some angel named Moroni shows up and talks to him. L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, didn't claim to see an angel, but he says, look, I got this whole thing. This is what we do. Mary Baker Eddy with Christian Science. All of these cults, false religions, depend on the revelation of essentially one person, and many of them claiming to have seen an angel. Remember what Paul said in Galatians 1.8, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. We know that Islam, for a fact, is of Satan, because they deny that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Messiah. 1 John 2, 22 said, Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. So when you look at these groups, like Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda. You have to understand that there is a spiritual component that is going on in the background. If you try to understand these groups by just national and economic rationales, you will never understand them because they are motivated by a spiritual demonic ideology. Satan has gotten control and uses these people to deceive entire groups. And so that's really my concern, especially I hear these statistics that over 50% of the Palestinians are children. Think about that. 50% of these Palestinians are little kids that are being brainwashed by a group that is essentially a tool of Satan, that tells them that it's okay to murder and rape Christians and Jews. So my heart goes out for these little children, these little kids. My heart goes out to the Israeli families who have lost children kids mothers fathers I mean this the statistics are just stunning over 1,200 civilians killed I've heard people in Israel saying that this is their 9-11 and You know, you think about how we felt after 9-11 here in this country. We felt vulnerable. We felt frustrated. We felt righteously angry, I think. And that's how Israel feels as a result of this. But in all of this, we need to take a step back and understand what is going on in the background, that there is a spiritual force of evil that is at work and its tool is Hamas. Second, Second thing I want you to know and understand. We need to pray for the Jews. because they have rejected their Lord and Savior, their Messiah. This has been really on my heart this week as well, as I've just been thinking about all of this. I saw an interview with Ben Shapiro, just so sad. He was on Joe Rogan's podcast and Shapiro said, you know, he said, Jesus never worked a miracle. Joe Rogan said, but don't you believe he was a prophet? Shapiro said, no, he's not a prophet and he's certainly not the Messiah. Shapiro said he was a misguided man who was essentially confronting Rome and Rome put to death. And that's really the sentiment of many Jews across the world. We praise God for our brothers and sisters in Christ, Messianic Jews who have been converted, but many, many, many, in fact, the majority of Jews that are alive today have rejected their Messiah. In this sense, Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter four, that their minds have been blinded by Satan. Jesus said to the Jews of his day, quote, this is John 8, if God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. So the Jewish people today, are in darkness. They are cut off from God's blessings. Outside of Christ, each and every one of them is going to hell. That's what Paul says in Romans 9. You don't get in simply by having Abraham as your father. Jesus said that. You have to be united to Christ in faith. You have to repent of your sins, come to Christ. And so, Israel's a nation. We share many things in common with them. They're the only democracy in the Middle East. They have hospitals. They have many of our values. And really, they're our only ally over there, politically speaking. But spiritually speaking, It is a dark place where, just like America, abortions are rampant. I saw, this is several months ago, that they were revoking visas of Christian missionaries that were there. that might be seeking to proselytize. So this is not a people that is in covenant with God. This is a people that, by and large, have rejected Yahweh and rejected their Messiah. Because that's what Jesus says, right? You reject me, you reject the Father. So, there are many great Orthodox Jews, my goodness, and I think, and I'm gonna talk more about this later, I think that they are close to the kingdom. Many are close, but they're not there yet. Third thing I want you to think about, spiritually speaking, is that war is caused by sin. Don't think of war abstractly as just something that nations do and it's unfortunate and it has terrible results. War is ultimately caused by sin. I want to give you a Martin Lloyd-Jones quote here. Here it is. The ultimate cause of war is lust and desire, the restlessness that is a part of us as the result of sin, this craving for that which is illicit and for that which we cannot obtain. It shows itself in many ways, both in personal, individual life, and also in the life of nations. It is the root cause of theft and robbery, jealousy and envy, pride and hate, infidelity and divorce. And in precisely the same way, it leads to personal quarrels and strife. and also to wars between nations. The Bible does not isolate war as if it were something separate and unique and quite apart, as we tend to do in our thinking. It is but one of the manifestations of sin, one of the consequences of sin, on a larger scale perhaps, in a more terrible form for that reason, but still in its essence precisely the same as all the other effects and consequences. of sin. Nations are made up of who? People. And people are sinners. People have greed. People have jealousy, lust, theft, robberies. That's what causes war. That's covetousness. When one nation says, we want what you have as a people, we feel like you've slighted us, and so we're going to get what's ours. And I think modern people think that we're better than the Germans, for example, in the early 1900s or the 1930s. We think that we're more enlightened. We think that we're above war. But guess what? We're not, are we? I mean, here we are in the 21st century and we have a war in Russia and Ukraine. Now we have war breaking out in the Middle East and I saw news reports that China could be invading Taiwan. A country called Azerbaijan could be invading Armenia. Basically, what you're seeing across the globe is sin. People want something that they feel entitled to, and if nobody will stop them, they feel like they can take it, or they can inflict pain on another group of people. We're not inherently better than any of our ancestors or previous generations. And we're seeing that today. That being said, war is sinful. That doesn't mean that engaging in war is necessarily sinful. Paul says in Romans 13 that the role of government is to bear the sword, to make a defense of the country, and sometimes you must fight and defend your country because you are being attacked, because another nation is sinning against your nation. And at that point, you must fight in the defense of your country for the freedom of your people, just like we had to do, and think about World War II, to oppose tyranny and oppression and the Holocaust of the Jews and the attack of the Japanese on our own country. So there are reasons and rationale to go to war, even though war always begins with sin. One of the things, being in the military, being in the Marine Corps, that I've noticed, and this is just reading war history, is that when war starts, oftentimes terrible, terrible evils and atrocities and sins are committed. Part of that is because people become desensitized to killing. Part of that is because of hate and anger. But oftentimes during wars, you do have murder and atrocities. When you kill an enemy combatant, that isn't murder. if it's done in combat. I once had a Marine come up to me and he basically said, I have a guilty conscience because I've killed Taliban. I said, well, did you do it in combat? He said, yeah. I said, well, that's not murdering somebody. That's taking somebody's life in a legal way, if you will, in war, which God sanctions. But what is wrong and what is sinful is to kill prisoners, intentionally target civilians, like Hamas recently did, Going back to the Japanese occupation of China, I don't know if any of y'all have ever heard about the rape of Nanking, where the Japanese went into the Chinese capital and they killed half the population, 300,000 people, and raped many of their women. That's murder. That's wrong. That's not just warfare. All that being said, in war, in combat, the moral lines can be blurred very quickly. Very quickly. Think about the atomic bomb. Think about that. that you can make an argument for it and against it. I've stood at ground zero. I've been there. And I know the devastating effects and the massive loss of life that would have occurred if America would have invaded mainland Japan, both on the Japanese side and the American side. I know that all of that was used to justify dropping the atomic bombs. But all I'm saying is the moral lines can be blurred very, very quickly. Fourth, and this is something I think goes back to the divine prerogative of God, but war often expresses God's judgment on a people, something that we don't, nobody's gonna talk about this, okay? But it's true, it's true. War often expresses God's divine judgment. When you read your Old Testament, that's what you see over and over and over and over and over again, is Israel is in sin. What nation does God raise up to come punish Israel? The Assyrians, remember? Judah is in sin. God raises up Nebuchadnezzar. And he sends him over to take Judah into captivity. Jeremiah says to the Kings, you don't oppose him. He's on a divine mission. If you oppose him, if you go to Egypt to get reinforcements, you're a goner. Because God had raised up Nebuchadnezzar and he brought the war to Judah's doorstep because it was an act of divine judgment. God calls Cyrus, his servant, to inflict judgment on the enemies of God. I think 9-11 and all the war on terror was providentially ordained by God as a wake-up call for us. I really do. I don't know the divine counsel of God. I don't. I don't know the secret will of God. But if I was a betting man, I would say 9-11 was a wake-up call for America, for us to repent of our sin and get down on our knees and come back to God as a country. And for a while, it seemed like that was going to be the response. But unfortunately, I think over the past 20 years, we've seen our nation wander further and further away from God. This past year, we had a president in the Oval Office in the White House who was flying the LBGTQ transgender flag in front of the White House. We are in a country, I know our nation has denounced all the killing of babies that Hamas did this past week. We are in a country that is slaughtering babies, slaughtering them and just calling it abortion. Are we morally more righteous as a nation? What's preventing God from marching on this country? I'm serious. I mean, why do we deserve God's blessing? How can we say God bless America when we're overturning God's standard for marriage? 2014. I had a friend ask me this the past week. He said, would you recommend somebody signing up right now to serve in the American Armed Forces? And I said, it's got to be a matter of conscience for that person. Because I understand the argument that you can go, you can be a light, and I have many friends that are. I have many family members that are still serving in the United States military. And they are doing the best that they can in the place that they are. And they are, many of them, Christians, and many of them, great Americans. And I salute them. I'm thankful that they are continuing to serve. But all that being said, we're in a war. Why would you bet on America? What right do we have to expect God to intervene on our behalf? And yes, I think in World War II, God intervened on our behalf. I mean, how else do you explain Midway? You see the Japanese carriers through a cloud bank, and that's the decisive verdict in the battle. Providence, that's God. That's God. That's not ingenuity and America success. That's God. We are in a dangerous spot, and in thinking about all that's going on in war, this should be a reminder to us to get our stuff right with God, to repent, to evangelize, and it begins with us as the church, with us as the people of God, walking circumspectly before the Lord. In a similar way, I think that this attack on Israel could be God's wake-up call for them. I think it could be God's wake-up call for them, that God is trying to shake them up, hopefully, Lord willing, so that they will repent and turn to Christ as their Lord and Savior. One thing as Christians, and thinking about this as judgment, thinking about war as judgment, Jesus said this, this is in the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24, six. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. And he's talking about this in terms of being signs of the end. He said, this is how you know that my second coming is about to be upon you. He says, see that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. And he says, and all these are but the beginnings of the birth pains. So in a sense, you have a final judgment right at the end, where the Lord comes back, judges the living and the dead. You have these birth pains of wars throughout history. Look at the 20th century. My goodness, more people were killed in the 20th century than all the other centuries. You have these wars, and the wars in essence are a precursor to the final judgment. That's also Revelation 6.3. When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come. And out came another horse bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another. And he was given a great sword. So the judgments in war are precursors to the final and ultimate judgment. Sobering, isn't it, to think about that? It's a wake-up call. It should be a wake-up call for all of us that sin is something that God takes very seriously. Now, in Christ, we don't need to be fearful of His wrath, but we should fear the Lord nonetheless. in a righteous way. Fifth, and I want you to listen carefully here because this might sound controversial, but I really don't think it is, but different people of different theological persuasions might hear this differently, but listen carefully. The current nation of Israel The one that's there post-1948 is not the biblical Israel of the Old Testament. I'm talking about the political entity. The political entity that's there now is not the sanctioned political entity that was there under the reign of the Davidic kings. That isn't to say that God has abandoned the Jew. God has not abandoned the Jewish people, but God's promises are to ethnic Jews and not to the current nation state of Israel. And all Christians should agree on this. Even if you're a dispensationalist, and we have many dispensationalists in our church, we have many post-millennialists in our church, we have more people like myself that are all mill, covenantal, all millennialist, But regardless of your persuasion, I think that you can agree with this because even if you are a dispensationalist, you are looking forward to a Jewish state where who's reigning? Christ is reigning. Is Christ reigning right now? No, He's not. So the state that's there is not the New Covenant state where Christ is reigning and ruling. The role of the Old Testament nation, think about the Old Testament nation. The role of the Old Testament nation, that political entity, ended when they rejected their Messiah. Ezekiel records in Ezekiel 10.18 that the presence of God left the temple. There used to be a Shekinah glory cloud literally over the temple, Ezekiel 10.18. And Ezekiel records that he saw that cloud depart and leave, basically go out the eastern gate of the city, that the presence of God departed. Now, God's presence returned in the person of Christ. He was the fulfillment of God's presence. He returns. But what happens with the nation of Israel, with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? They reject Him. They reject Christ. And this is what Christ said to the religious leaders of the day. This is Matthew 21, 43. He says, therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. Then in Matthew 24, just like Daniel did, Luke... 21 Mark 13, Jesus predicted that the nation of Israel and its temple would be destroyed, which it was in 70 A.D. So the nation of Israel comes to a decisive end in 70 A.D., decisive, just as Jesus and Daniel predicted. So in this day and age, regardless if you're post-millennial or pre-millennial, whatever you are, everybody is in agreement that God's program is the church. Everybody's in agreement on that. And the church is made up of who? Jew and Gentile. There's one people of God, and it's the church made up of Jew and Gentile. That's what Peter says. 1 Peter 2.9, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. What does that sound like? It sounds like he's talking about the nation of Israel, but he's applying it to both Jew and Gentile in the church. Thinking about the nation state of Israel, what does that mean? I think people are curious about this. People are asking questions about this. What does this mean about the Jewish state? Listen to this statement. The Jews are in the land of Israel providentially, not covenantally. The Jews are back in the land of Israel providentially, not covenantally. In other words, God has put them there for his sovereign purposes, his reasons, but right now they are not under a divine covenant. And here's what I think this sovereign reason is. This is point number six. Many Jews will return to Christ before the Lord's return. That's number six. Many Jews will return to Christ before the Lord's return. I want you to see this by turning with me to Romans chapter 11. In Romans 9 to 11, Paul's really answering the question of the Jew. What are we to make of the fact that that God had made these promises in the Old Testament that the Jews were His chosen people, and now you're dealing with a rejection of Christ on the part of many of the Jews. Just reading the beginning of Romans chapter 9, He says, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, talking about fellow Jews, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises, basically the whole Old Testament. to them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. But then he says, verse six, but it is not as though the word of God has failed. So the issue isn't with God's promises. Here's what he says, Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. And not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac your offspring shall be named. And he's going to make an argument here for individual election. He's going to say it's never been the case that just because you were born of Abraham's lineage that you were elect, that you were saved. That was never the case. that God's election has always stood. And he cites the example of Jacob and Esau. You have two twins, right? Two twins. What makes one better than the other? Nothing. Jacob was a trickster and Esau was a carnal person. Neither one of them was a good guy. But he says, God chose Jacob, not Esau. So God's plan has never faltered or failed. God has always chosen a remnant. And he picks this theme up of the remnant in chapter 11. Look at verse 7. He says, What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking? But he says, look, the elect obtained it, the remnant of Israel obtained it, but the rest were hardened as it is written. God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear down to this very day. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever. So there's been really a cloud over Israel in this New Testament church age. There's been, he says, a spirit of stupor that has come upon them, upon the majority of the people, even though Paul says the elect remnant have obtained mercy and salvation. If you jump down to verse 25, Paul speaks more to this. And again, these are deep things of God, and God reveals this to us, not so that we would be elevated in our thinking about ourselves, but so that we will be humbled. He says, lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel, look at this language, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. So, what I think he's saying here, is that the majority of the Jews throughout the church age have rejected the Messiah in God's plan according to His sovereign purposes, His divine election. He says that this will take place for a period of time until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. What does he mean by that? until the appointed Gentiles that God has determined will be saved. That's absolutely what he means. That there is a designated number of people that are not Jew, that's probably most of us here, that will be saved. And then he says, essentially, and this is what I'm inferring, that that hardening will be released. And then, verse 26, all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob, and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. So Israel, as a people, the Jewish people, will turn to Christ, I think, in large, massive numbers in the final days. Verse 23, look up at verse 23. It says, and even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. So, I think God will do a great work, according to what Paul's saying, in the last days, before the Lord's return, where many Jews will be grafted into Christ, where there'll be this hardening will be lifted and there will be widespread conversion, repentance, faith, so forth. And in that day, incidentally, Paul says 2 Thessalonians 2, 3, talking about what I think is the Antichrist. He says, let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come, talking about the day of the Lord's return, unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed. Daniel 12 one says, and there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time, but that time your people shall be delivered. Everyone whose name shall be written in the book. Essentially, in the last days, there will be a time of apostasy in the church. You know, when Paul talks about the rebellion that comes before his return, a rebellion involves people who are once confessing allegiance to Christ and then rebel against him. So I think that there's going to be an ingathering of Jews and a widespread rebellion probably in what we know today as the Gentile church. So what I am hoping and praying for, and this is what I meant by when I said that Israel is in the land providentially, not covenantally, I think what God is doing is He's bringing all these Jews back from the four corners of the globe to this one little area. He's bringing immense pressure on them and my hope and prayer is that they will realize their need for Christ and turn to Him and repent. And I said this week on social media, I said we need to be praying for that. We need to be praying for that to happen. I had so many people that responded and they said, haven't you read Romans 11? God says the Jews will repent and come to faith anyway. We don't need to pray for that. I kid you not. That's such a silly statement because Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that God will provide for your needs, that God will give you the food that you need, but then what does he tell us to pray for in the Lord's Prayer? give us this day our daily bread. God makes promises to us, but then he says, you pray that these promises will come about. God has said, yes, there will be a mass conversion of the Jews in the end, but what if God has ordained that that happen as a result of our prayers? So we need to be praying for that, that God would usher in that period. And that's not to say that we're not praying for the Palestinians as well that don't know Christ. We need to be praying for them as well. But in terms of Israel, that should be our prayer, that they would come to faith and repentance in Christ. Seventh thing. I do not think that this is a case of fulfilled prophecy. Some people have asked me this week about these verses in the prophet Amos. Amos chapter one, verses six through nine. You know, is this attack from the Gaza Strip and then basically this, what looks like an imminent invasion of Gaza, is this a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the verses that are quoted? Amos chapter one, verses six to nine. Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Gaza and for four I will not revoke the punishment because they carried into exile a whole people to deliver them up to Edom. So I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour her strongholds. I will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod and him who holds the scepter from Ashkelon. I will turn my hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, says the Lord God. Now, that is not what is taking place right now in the Middle East. The reason I know that is because the Palestinians aren't the Philistines. They've been called that to remind the Jews of the Philistines. God brought about this specific judgment by Nebuchadnezzar on the Philistines 2700 years ago. This has already been fulfilled. Also, if you pay careful attention, yeah, it mentions Gaza, but Ashdod and Ashkelon are cities in Israel. So those aren't within Gaza. So you'd basically be saying, okay, Gaza is going to be wiped out as a result of this prophecy, but also these two other Jewish cities. So the specific prophecy is in reference to the Philistines. And as far as I know, they were wiped off the face of the map by the Babylonians. They no longer exist. So the prophecy has already been fulfilled. The prophecy that I go back to is Jesus said, look, there's going to be wars and rumors of wars. And these are all judgment from God and birth pains towards the end. So in that sense, yes, this is a sign of the times, but I don't think it's a specific reference to Amos and other Old Testament prophecies. Let me just give you some application points here to take away. First, Pray that the power and authority of Hamas and these evil organizations like Hezbollah will be overthrown. I mean, obviously Christ will put all these things under his feet. Christ is reigning. It's just a matter of time. But for the sake of the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people, there are even Christian Palestinians that are underneath this evil regime. And so we need to be praying that God will overthrow these radical Islamic organizations that rule their people with an iron fist. Second, pray for the Jews that they would recognize their Messiah. Third, pray for the civilian non-combatants, the children that are in Israel, the children that are in Palestine, many of whom will lose their lives as collateral damage in the war that that looks imminent. I mean, it's just awful to think about what will happen to really seemingly innocent people that have nothing involved with this controversy. Pray for the Palestinians in Gaza to be converted. Pray for the Christians that are in Gaza. There are some Christians there that God would protect them and that God would provide for them amidst all of this difficulty. Fifth, pray for repentance. We are seeing sin on a wide scale across the country, or across the globe, and rather than just pointing our finger at the sin that's over there, we need to be pointing the finger at the sin that's here. If we're going to be serious about sin, we need to be serious about our own sin. and we need to pray for repentance for our country. Six, pray for government leaders all over the world. That's 1 Timothy 2. Pray especially for our government leaders, for Joe Biden and military leaders, and pray for the leaders of Israel. Pray for the leaders of these other Arab nations. Pray for wisdom, even though they are not believers, but pray that they would not escalate matters further. Seventh, pray for one another. Pray for our church. It will be easy in the coming days, especially if something really bad happens. And something really bad could happen. Something really terrible could happen. The door's not shut on what potentially, on all the evil that could take place. What happens if somebody launches a nuclear bomb? What happens if there's attacks on our soil? I mean, we have an open southern border. Who knows who's come through, right? What if there's an attack on our country? I mean, just driving in tonight, we drove past, there was a Palestinian rally downtown. And I was getting out of the car, Charles said, he was afraid to get out of the vehicle, just because he's been seeing what's going on on the news. So we need to be praying that we would not be anxious. but that we would take this opportunity to be bold, that we would be lights, that we would be an example of Christian light in this world, that in the midst of all this darkness and hate and evil, that we would be the people of God, and that we would look to God, that we would look to Him as the source of our hope in the midst of these trying days. And I hate to say it, but I do think things are gonna get worse before they get better. I don't see an end to this coming, and so we need each other, we need to encourage each other, we need to pray for one another. So with that being said, let me pray for us now. Go to the Lord and pray for these things. Heavenly Father, we as a church body, Lord, we love you. We look to you. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for your grace, your mercy, your kindness towards us that you drew us out of darkness. That's of grace. We know, Lord, that we are no better than the Hamas terrorist, that outside of grace we would be shaking our fist at God. So, Lord, we thank you for your salvation, your mercy towards us. We do pray that the power of Hamas over the Palestinian people would be broken. We pray, Lord, for the Jews in Israel, that you would use all of these circumstances to lead them to the Messiah, that you would protect them, protect their civilians. We pray, Lord, for the civilians in Palestine, that you would protect them. We pray, Lord, for the 50%, the million kids that are there. We pray, Lord, we do not want any of them to be killed. We pray, Lord, that they would be protected and that they would that they would be converted from the darkness of Islam and would come to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord, for their protection. We pray, Lord, that we would seek you in repentance and faith, that we would confess our sin, that we would repent of our sins, that we would look to our own lives, our own church, our own country, and seek repentance. We do pray, Lord, for all the government leaders. We pray for Netanyahu. We pray for The president of Palestine, we pray for Joe Biden. We pray for all these people, Lord, because they need wisdom. They need wisdom as they handle very difficult situations, make very hard, hard decisions, decisions that often involve details that we know nothing about or hard for us to understand. We pray for them. We pray, Lord, that in some way that the fighting would de-escalate, that there would not be a global war where many, many, many, many, many people would lose their lives. But we also pray, Lord, for justice and that Hamas would be brought to an end. We do pray for one another. We pray for our church. We pray, Lord, for boldness, boldness in the gospel, boldness in repentance, boldness in faith. and that we would be looking to you in the midst of these dark, trying times, and that in so doing, our faith would be uplifted and that we would be strong. May we be a light in this city to everyone, to those who have rejected Christ, to Muslims, to all sorts of people, that we would be a light where you have us, God. And Lord, we pray that the word of God would be effective. that you would use the word to convert people, even hardened people who reject Christ as Messiah. Even the most hardened Jew, the most hardened Muslim, we pray, Lord, that they would come to know Christ. We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to gather tonight in this country where the word of God can be proclaimed, where we can pray, where we can sing hymns, where we can sing Psalm 8. What a blessing. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. Thanks for listening. 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