The church picnic is coming up, and I did look at the weather forecast this morning. No rain for that Saturday, and the temperature should be between like 65 and 80. So we may be blessed out, graced out this time. So that's about it. Also, the evangelism seminar, I've heard nothing but good reports. from last Saturday, so those will be available. The audio is available online, and I encourage everyone to listen to those. It's very, very well done. And then if you want to look at the video, you can order it either online or talk to the appropriate people here. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall rise up, they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint. Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. I think it's important to recognize that those two promises from Isaiah were given to the Jewish people because of the message of Isaiah that there was a time coming when there would be a divine judgment on the nation from Babylon and that they would be removed from the land. Nevertheless, he still gave them those promises that they could trust God grounded in the unconditional eternal covenant with Abraham. that even though God was going to take them out of the land, even though God would bring them through some horrible, horrific things that happened, both at that time and later in A.D. 70, that would make the events of last Saturday pale in comparison. But God said that he would take care of them and he would not break his promise to bring them back to the land. So that's what we'll be talking about this evening. But as we prepare for our time together, let's bow our heads together and make sure we're in right relationship with the Lord. And then after a few moments of silent prayer, I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful we have this time to come together to think about your Word, think about your plan for history, think about how you have revealed yourself in your Word, recognizing that you have a plan and a purpose for Israel, a plan and a purpose for the human race, and that that will not be defeated. So, Father, we do continue to pray for Israel. We have friends who have sons and daughters who are in the IDF. We pray for them. that you would protect them, watch over them. We know of many organizations that are working in Israel, working to tell people about the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua, who died on the cross for their sins. Father, we pray for them and for the ministry that they will have. We pray for safety for also for many of those workers. Father, we pray tonight that as we think through issues that are raised when we see this horrific war that has come, this surprise attack. We pray that we might be able to think it through biblically. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. I thought I would start off this evening with just showing you sort of some before pictures as we talk about the war in Gaza and how should we think about this. That's the question tonight. How should we think about this? How are we to approach the issues that come up in our lives, biblically, because we have to look at them biblically. You either look at them one of two ways. You look at them the way God looks at them, which is based on our understanding of the Bible, or you look at it the way rebellious humans and rebellious angels look at it. You're either on one side or the other. There's only two sides, and there's only one way to look at it truthfully according to reality, and that's God's way. Now about 10 years ago, I got the opportunity to go to, along the Gaza Strip. And unfortunately, I don't know what has happened to them, but I had some good pictures of Sderot and good pictures of Kfar Aza, where they discovered the 40 babies that had been horribly killed. And I wanted to show some before pictures as well. But this was at an IDF outpost. And if you can think of what the Gaza Strip looks like, it's a small section of land along the Mediterranean. It's about maybe seven, eight miles deep, and then it's about 25 miles long. And if you go up the inner border to the north, then it makes a right angle turn to go back to the Mediterranean. right on that corner is an IDF listening post. And so I had the opportunity to go there and I took a couple of videos. They have these walking areas, tunnels, not really tunnels, but along the way that are protected. They're under camouflage. You can see off in the distance some of the hills that are across the way in in Gaza. So I'm going to just turn that on and I just thought I'd walk along the way and take pictures. Now that's looking directly across into Gaza and these are the defense, their defensive position there on that particular corner. When I got there some of my reputation must have preceded me for the soldiers there had laid out on the ground, some tarps. And on those tarps, every weapon that they had was all laid out so that they could give me a complete rundown on all their weapon systems. But this was, so this is their defensive area. Now, one of the things I'll mention a little later is the development of Iron Dome. Now, some of you know what Iron Dome is. Some of you don't know what Iron Dome is. Some people who may be listening to this don't know what Iron Dome is. But with the help of the United States government, a tremendous amount of funding, and of course, all this funding, people get upset. Well, we're giving so much money to Israel. It's really an investment because most of it comes back to us. Lockheed Martin has developed the, I think it was the F-16 and the F-35. And the president of our CEO of Lockheed Martin, has said on numerous occasions that Israel is their research and development arm, because they take these very sophisticated weapon systems and they take them, send them over to Israel. Israel will strip down the computers, redo all of the computerization, and enhance everything, and send it back to the US without some of their special twists and turns, a much better aircraft than they received. And that is worth a tremendous amount. And then they use it in real time, dealing in all of these various conflicts. So it's very beneficial. And this is Iron Dome. These missiles are designed to track and identify the short-range missiles that come out of Gaza and take them out. They can almost instantly identify the track, the direction, the target, or the area where the missile will land. And if it's not going to land in an occupied area, if it's going to land in a vacant lot or in somebody's, some farmer's field, then the Iron Dome missile will break off and acquire a secondary target. So it is a remarkable thing. The weakness is that it can be overpowered. And that's what happened last Saturday morning when Hamas attacked. They attacked with an overwhelming number of, I've seen estimates, they claim 5,000. I've seen estimates between 4,000 and 5,000 rockets. And it just overwhelmed the system. And this is what led to some problems. On Sunday morning, I mentioned some friends of Amos. Amos is our Israeli tour guide. Some of you have met him and been over there with him. And he's been guiding me since 2006, the first time we went over there. So that's a pretty long time. And there have been several times when I've been over there, either with a tour group or once with AIPAC and once with a tour sponsored by the Israeli government, the foreign ministry. And afterwards, Amos and I would rent a car and we would just take off and travel, look at other sites to take tour groups to and talk about things. And one of the things we did one year was we went down along Gaza. We went to Kfar Gaza, we went to Sderot, and we went to a couple of other locations. So this is a picture of that kibbutz. This is Kibbutz Berri. If you've been watching any of the news reports, you've seen this. You've seen him talk about it. And it is, there were about 1200 people that lived there. They had a huge printing plant, which I believe is this building here, that printed all of the official documents that went out from the Israeli government, including all of your tax statements and how much you owe the government. So that was completely destroyed by the Hamas terrorists. So a lot of people are kind of hoping that they'll lose what they are to pay for their income tax. It was a very beautiful kibbutz. Here are some pictures of it. And this was where this couple, these friends, close friends of Amos' were hiding out. They took refuge at 6.30 in the morning when they were alerted, finally, They heard some explosions, so they knew something was happening and they went into their bunker. Their house, Amos tells me, was at the farthest end of the kibbutz away from Gaza, which was very fortunate for them. The house closest to them, not necessarily right next door, but closest to them was burned to the ground. Several were burned to the ground, so I'm not sure if that's the house. where 11 family members were taken as hostages back into Gaza. Some of you may have seen the reports on some of the news outlets that one member of that family had left the kibbutz and moved to Beersheba, and she was going to one of those concerts when the attack occurred. And she was communicating back with her family and they had taken refuge. Her husband was there. Her parents were there. Her sister was there with her husband and two kids. And I believe a cousin was there with two or three other kids. And they took shelter. Well, what the murderers did was that they burned the house to the ground, which would force them to leave their sanctuary in their bunker if they were going to survive. And then they were going to be taken captive. So the report is that I have heard from people there is that if you, their target was women. And if you were a woman, you would have expected to have been raped numerous times. And then you would be, various other things would happen. Your children, if they survived, would have been tortured and beaten in front of you. For several parents, their hands were tied. Their children were tortured and beaten, and then they were executed in front of the parents. And then the parents were executed and burned or just burned alive before they were executed. This is just some of the things that were going on. Now, a lot of people have asked the question, well, what happened? Well, let me show you one more picture here. So they went into their bunker, And this is all they had to protect themselves was their knives. Because up until about three days ago, Israelis were not allowed to have weapons. You didn't have a Second Amendment. They have reversed that in the last few days. This is the family sitting there, showing their knives, ready to face what may come. It's been reported that one of the reasons that Hamas was able to gain such a surprise was that due to the developing cooperation of Russia, China, and Iran, that they were able to develop the technology, the software, to block and disable the artificial intelligence-based alert system that Israel had on the borders that would detect any kind of movement and then alert people. There were also cameras that were located all along the border. I've heard one report that this was, they were shot out by snipers. That's pretty darn good shooting because you're at least a couple of hundred yards away. But the more accurate report is probably that they flew drones close to them and dropped bombs right next to the cameras to blow them up. Less likelihood of missing. The tactic of the Hamas terrorists at the beginning was to disable the military. Now they knew all of the installations. And they sent in teams that flew in on hang gliders that would not be picked up by radar. And they were dropping bombs from the hang gliders. And they took out these military installations almost immediately, which meant that nothing was being radioed back to headquarters that there was an attack. So they disabled the cameras. Then they took out the military posts so nobody was alerting anyone as to what was going on. They sent in teams. They had, I think, 15 different areas along the fence where they blew holes in the fence and came through with all manner of vehicles. There were approximately 200 Hamas terrorists that came in. And as they realized their success, they allowed another 1,500 civilians to come in who did the same thing, tortured, maimed, murdered, burned, destroyed every human being they could come into contact with. They went into these kibbutzim, they just walked into the homes, if you see the pictures, and they're out there because unlike the Nazis in World War II who attempted to hide everything that they were doing because that shows they knew it was wrong and that it was criminal, These animals that came out of Gaza were live streaming the murders, the torture. That is how the IDF was first really alerted to what was actually happening along the Gaza border. And it's been reported that Netanyahu was not alerted until 6.30 in the morning, their time on that Saturday morning, And at that time, that was when the full-scale attack began. So these murderers and rapists went into the homes. They captured some. They murdered others. They dragged them out. They killed children in their beds. There are blood-soaked beds. I'm talking every inch of the sheets filled with blood. They dismembered many people and put them in plastic garbage bags. At Kfar Aza, 40 babies were found, some all murdered, some beheaded and tortured in front of their parents. There was a music festival I'm sure you've heard about. There were two different festivals. One had a smaller number of two or three hundred, the other much larger number But they showed video last night. If you caught it on ABC News, they had a one-hour special that had just collected video from different people's iPhones that was very well done. It was just chilling to watch what happened. The people heard the explosions at the music festival, ran for their cars, hid in their cars, And then the security guards were wearing Israeli security uniforms and then they got in their cars and they drove down the road and shot up every car along the way and 150 were killed. So this is what happened. This is horrific. It's the greatest loss of life in a single day by Jews since the Holocaust. And of course that was much, much greater. So we learn about this. We have evidence. So there will be, if they survive, there will be war crimes. I don't know if there will be. But to understand this, we have to think biblically. That is what we do. The Bible is our source of authority. So how are we going to think about this thing Biblically what I want to do is mention talk a little bit about biblically a little bit theologically a little bit then in terms of some things that we can learn and Some things that we should think about doing so we are to think biblically Thinking biblically means to think in terms of God's revelation He revealed himself in the scripture. So our starting point whenever we're talking about anything is always to start with God. We have to start with God, and we have to understand who this God is of the Bible. Some people will say, well, God was sleeping. God wasn't paying attention. Why would God allow these things to happen to his people? God must have been AWOL when this happened. But we have to start by thinking about who this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is. What does the Scripture teach about him? He's the God of Moses and Joshua. And as we've seen this summer with the discoveries of the tabernacle at Shiloh, the discoveries of Joshua's altar, that this theory, this myth created by anti-semitic liberal German theologians, so-called theologians, starting back in the 18th century was not grounded in a search for truth. It was grounded in a hatred for the God of the Jews. It was grounded in a hatred of anti-semitism and a desire to disprove the scriptures. So they taught that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were just legends. Moses and Joshua never existed. They were just legends. They taught that David was a legend. But this is the God of Moses and Joshua, the God of David who killed Goliath, the great king of Israel, and the God of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Nahum, Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, all of the prophets except for Jonah. Jonah took the message to the Assyrians in Nineveh. And so when we read about this God, what we learn about him is that he is the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. And we have to unpack that idea. We've done that in a study on Tuesday nights in the Interlock series, that when you think about God creating everything, that means that God's intelligence, his knowledge is so vast. It's immeasurable. He's an infinite being. We can't comprehend that. And he designs everything down to the smallest nanoparticle, subatomic particles, submolecular particles, and how everything intersects and works together. Not only did he create everything perfect, but he created it in such a way that it had enough flexibility to handle the chaos that would come into creation as a result of sin. And there's all this debate that goes on about creation and evolution, but an important passage is Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11, which is the commandment related to the Sabbath. So the Jews were commanded in the Mosaic law to observe the Sabbath. And then they're told, six days you will work and do all your work. And on the seventh day you will rest. It's the Sabbath of the Lord your God. It's not a Sabbath. that man came up with. But it's from the Lord. He is the one who modeled it in the creation week. So if those aren't literal consecutive 24-hour days, then it would be easy to rationalize away this commandment to observe the Sabbath. Well, the Sabbath is only every 7,000th year or 700,000th year. Something like that. Because the rationale for it is stated in verse 11. For in six days The Lord made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day." To understand this creator, we have to recognize there's a creator-creature distinction. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. So when we look at the world and we see bad things, we see horrible things, we see the murder of innocent children, the horrific treatment of children, Often the families involved respond by saying something like, why is this happening? How can God let this happen to me? Which is, you know, and I'm not being insensitive, it's a very self-centered thing and that's what we do. That's our sin nature talking. But what we learn if we study history is that what happened last Saturday is more the norm in history. because God allows it. Why does God allow such horrible things to happen? That's the question. But God does it because he sees that the alternatives would be worse because God's omniscient. People may say, well, I just don't believe that. Well, that's it. It's a choice of belief. You either trust in God because he is totally omniscient. That means there's nothing God doesn't know. He knows all the knowable down to the most minute particles of knowledge. He knows how everything works together. And He created everything to work the way it does. So God is intimately involved in every single thing. He is omnipotent. Scriptures talk about this. Psalm 89, 13. You have a mighty arm, strong is your hand and high is your right hand. These are just metaphors for the power, the unlimited power of God. Isaiah 48, 13, Indeed, my hand has laid the foundation of the earth. Now, can any of us do that? Do we know anyone who can do that? No one can lay the foundation of the earth. Nobody can create a planet. But God has created not only the planets. It's one thing to create a block of rock and just set it out there, hang it in empty space. But for it to rotate on its axis in just a perfect timing, be set at exactly the perfect distance from the sun, that it is able to have an atmosphere, its gravity pull is designed to keep the atmosphere on the planet so that it is all perfect for the survival of human beings. He stretched out the heavens People have too small of a view of God. Oh, I can't understand how God would do that. They're acting like he's their next door neighbor who's some sort of gentle old man who just happens to be a genius and no more. God knows much more than the sum total of all human knowledge times 10 to the one billionth power. And we have to understand that. So sometimes we just have to say, well, Lord, you know a little bit more about it than I do. So I have to trust you because I don't know even a particle of what you know. And so I have no right to say, well, how can you do this? See, that's the story of the book of Job. God allowed Job to be tested by Satan. We know the story that storms came up, blew down the house where his children were having a birthday party, celebrating their birthdays together and they all died. And then various bands of wrestlers came in and stole all of his livestock. And all of these things happened. And then God had told Satan, you can do anything but you can't touch him. So then he goes through round two when Satan is allowed to affect his health. And he goes all of this and his wife turns bitter, which is what happens to a lot of people. They see this. They don't want to try to understand God. They don't want to try to trust him. And she just gets mad and say, well, just curse God and die. But Job won't do that. So Job will pass the test to some degree. But finally, he wants a hearing before God. And God starts asking him in chapter 38 a lot of questions. Just rhetorical questions. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Did you witness that? No. Who witnessed it? The only person there was God. Where were you when this? How do you know about that? Answer all of these things. And Job can't answer any of the questions. What God is pointing out is finite man may know a lot, but he can't understand what God knows and how it interacts. And so God is saying, I'm not going to answer your question because you couldn't understand it if I did. It's sort of like if I went into a physics classroom and a professor explained the law of relativity. I'd be lost. Fill the blackboards with equations. I couldn't follow one of them. That's not the area that God gave me ability. I've told you many times, when he was 15 years old, my dad was tutoring calculus at U of H. When I was 15 years old, I was taking algebra for the second time. I missed those genes. But just because I can't comprehend how Einstein came up with his theory of relativity doesn't mean that it's not true. And yet, that's the way a lot of people think, well, I can't understand it, so it must not be true. In fact, I've heard some people say, well, I need a God I can understand. Well, if you could understand Him, He wouldn't be God. Because God is infinite and we are finite, we'll never comprehend Him, but He will tell us true things about Himself and we are to believe it. Job 42.2, Job says at the end, this is 42.38, starts with all the questions. In verse two, he says, I know that you can do everything. There's, in the New Testament tells us that with God, nothing is impossible. Job said, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you. So he's omnipotent. He is all powerful. There's nothing that God cannot do that he desires to do. He is omniscient. He knows all of the knowable. He knows everything that possibly could happen. He makes statements like, well, if Sodom and Gomorrah had had the revelation you have, talking to Capernaum and Bethsaida, if Sodom and Gomorrah had had the revelation you had, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. He knows what would have, could have, should have happened. And he knows what would happen if those other paths were taken. and he knows what paths will be taken. David says, this is King David who defeated Goliath, who was the greatest king Israel had, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You have known my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways. God knows everything. Genesis 16, 13, after Sarah convinced Abraham to kick Hagar out because she had had a son, and this would cause conflict in the family, she was out in the wilderness and the Lord appeared to her. See, the Lord didn't turn his back on Hagar, and the Lord promised her that he would take care of her and her son, and that he would be also the father of many nations. That's part of why we have the Arab-Israeli conflict today. Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, you are the God who sees. For she said, have I also here seen him who sees me? Seeing is God knows her. He knows where she is, all her whereabouts, everything that she needs. So our conclusion is that there's nothing impossible for God. We have to start with that. There is nothing God does not know fully and forever and ever. He has always known everything. So whether we're talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., or the horrible ways the Romans treated the Jews in A.D. 70, or we're talking about the Holocaust, or we're talking about what happened in Gaza last week, or any other number of other things that are so horrible, famines, hurricanes, wars. God knows. But God, when he created us, he created us with responsible choice. If we don't have responsible choice, then we're automatons. We're robots. We're just like a computer. We are programmed to do one thing or the other, but we have no individual responsibility for our choices. So God allows human beings to make bad choices, and bad choices lead to bad consequences. Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, and they were told that they could eat from anything God provided for them. He had the greatest fruit orchard that ever existed, and the greatest grocery store, and they could eat anything, but he told them, you can't eat from this one tree. Because in the instant you do that, you will die. Not because it was poisoned, but because an act of disobedience would bring sin into the world, and it would change everything radically. And that's what happened. But God created everything so that it could handle all of this chaos, and one day God will make it right. But the instant He decides to end human history, then there will be no more choice, no more people that can be saved, and it's over with. So God in his grace continues to extend human history and we see on display the evil in the human heart and he allows that for his purposes. We say, well, why does he allow bad things to happen to good people? So we go to Genesis. We go to Genesis and we look at Genesis chapter 37. And in Genesis chapter 37 we find that Jacob has 12 sons and a daughter. And one of his sons who was the firstborn of his favorite wife whom he loved, Rachel, is named Joseph. And he favors Joseph because he loved his mother. And so he does a lot of good things for Joseph and it makes all of his brothers jealous. So his brothers decide to get rid of him. So they conspire to kill him. And they throw him down a hole and they are going to kill him. But one of the brothers, Reuben, he just can't deal with that. So he finally convinces them when some Arab traders come along, Ishmaelites, that they should sell him to him as a slave. So isn't that great? Your brothers all turn on you and sell you as a slave to a bunch of Arab merchants. And then they took him to Egypt. And in Egypt, he was bought by Potiphar, who was high in the chain of command under the Pharaoh. And then he is framed by Pharaoh's wife, who says that Joseph tried to rape her, seduce her and rape her. And so he gets thrown in prison. Now you'd be thinking at this point, why should I be worshiping God? He just really hasn't done anything good for me. I put me in this really crummy family. They turned on me and sold me into slavery. And then as a slave, I get framed and I get put into prison. And you can just imagine that an ancient prison of the Egyptians wasn't exactly a really great place to be. And so he's there. But it is from that position that God is going to elevate him to be second in command in Egypt so that when the famines come he's prepared, revealed things to Joseph and prepared Joseph so that Joseph is given the responsibility to store up grain for seven years in light of the coming seven years of famine. When that famine gets so bad that his father and his brothers have to come down to Egypt to buy grain Joseph cloaks his identity. He doesn't want them to know it's him. When he finally reveals himself, they're, of course, very glad to see him. They can't believe they can see him, but boy, do they feel guilty. And then when Jacob dies, they are fearful because they think that now that Jacob's dead, Joseph is going to take it out on them. And Joseph basically tells them in Genesis 50 that he's forgiven them. And he has this incredible statement there in verse 20 of chapter 50. But as for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good. See, we look at bad things and evil things and everything from economic collapse to failure to find any decent leaders to elect to the highest offices in the land. to the loss of health. We look at all these things and why is God letting this happen to me? And God is in control and he lets bad things happen to good people because he has a greater purpose. In the New Testament it says in Romans 8.28, and we know that all things work together for good. It does not say all things are good. But all things work together for good. God is working all things together for good. Romans 8.28 is the New Testament counterpart to Genesis 50.20. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. There are reasons God allows things, and just because in our finite mind we can't comprehend what the greater good is, doesn't mean that it isn't there. So God gave humanity responsible choice. and they used it to disobey Him. In Genesis 2.27 we have the episode, the warning that if you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you'll surely die. In Genesis 3.8-10 we see some of the consequences of that. It's fear of God. God had walked daily in the garden and then after they sinned by eating the fruit they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day which was the normal pattern. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees. Why are they hiding? That's what God asked. Where are you? Literally, it's why are you where you are? And so Adam said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. So God went, well, who told you that? And so then the story all comes out and Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent. and then God is going to announce the judgment on them. It's the problem of sin, and we underestimate the horrors of sin. Sin is wicked and evil. It is traced in the early chapters of Genesis, the consequences. In Genesis 4, we have the first fratricide. Cain murders his brother Abel. Later, there's another murder Lamech brags on the fact that he's killed a man for wounding him and then a younger man for hurting him. So it's not a comparable punishment. But he brags it got worse because of Cain. Cain sinned and it just multiplied. When we get to the end of that initial part, that initial part of human history that goes from the fall of Adam to the flood of Noah, God looks upon this, the earth, which by this time probably had a population of three or four million, or three or four billion people, because they lived for a thousand years almost. And you have multiple generations, maybe ten generations living at the same time. So the population of the earth just exploded. And the Lord makes an evaluation. He says, saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every Not most, but every. That's called total inability. That every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Notice, only evil. Continually. Nothing good is going on. Man is in complete rebellion against God, the human race, so God's going to hit the reset button. And he says in verse seven, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and bees, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I'm sorry that I've made him. Except for one family, and that's the family of Noah. And so he gives them instructions. And then there's a period of time. So we see this pattern of grace before judgment. And then he's going to save that family and destroy all the earth. Everything is going to change. Everything is going to be different. But after they get off the ark, sin is still there because it's in the human heart. In Jeremiah 17, Jeremiah has a very insightful comment here under divine revelation. He said, the heart is deceitful above all things. Nothing is more deceitful than the human heart. This refers to the human soul. Who can know it? We can't perceive our own self-deception. We don't have objectivity. But the answer is, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. Omniscient God knows all the knowable. There's nothing in our soul. There's no darkness in our imagination that God does not know about. When we go back to the first of that chapter, I was talking about sin. Sin just continues through the Old Testament. In verse 1, the sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, indicating that it is so hard. With the point of a diamond, it is engraved on the tablet of their heart. So their sin is written on the tablet of their heart and on the horns of your altars. While the children remember their altars and their wooden images, this is not the altar of God, this is the idolatry. And then there's this, the next several verses are just an indictment for their idolatry and their trust in human beings rather than God. Verse 5, God says, Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. But blessed, verse 7, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. That's the issue in human history. Are you going to trust God or trust yourself? Now, if we go back to Genesis, the next major event after the flood is the Tower of Babel. This is when God scatters mankind. They didn't disperse over the earth as God instructed them. And so he scatters them over the face of the earth, and they're going to build their own city. They were building their own city, and he scattered them abroad because they were unifying in rebellion against God. And so he confused the languages. God invented language. God invented the human ability to speak and to understand and to hear and to see. So it was easy for God to confuse the languages and invent. I don't think there were as many languages at that time as there are, as there were a hundred years later. They divided and in some areas, for example, I've been told in Irian Jaya that the primitive tribes can only manage to keep 10 to 15 people together at a time. And once they get any larger than that, they have to divide. And that within a generation, those two tribes now do not understand each other. The languages are morphing so quickly. So God scatters them abroad the face of the earth. So what is he going to do now? How is God going to build a relationship with mankind? This is critical to understand. Because God's solution is now he's going to work through one person, and that's going to be Abraham. So he gives Abraham marching orders. Abraham has already trusted in God's promise of salvation according to Genesis 15, 6. And he says, he tells, God tells Abraham to leave, go to a land he will show him. So he doesn't even know where he's going yet. He has to trust God. And God makes a promise. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and I will make your name great and you shall be. This is a command. You will be a blessing. See, that's what's happened with his descendants, the Jewish people. They are a blessing to the rest of the world, even when they're in rebellion against God. You have a cell phone. That cell phone wouldn't work if it weren't for Israeli technology. You have a laptop at home. You have even back when you had an answering machine or you have the answering programs, apps on your phone. That was developed by the Israelis. There's so much that they have developed that we benefit from and we don't even know from whence it came. Medical thing. You can take a pill with a little camera in it. It's a little pill. It's not like a horse pill. And it'll take video all the way down through your system and then they'll take that and they'll look at it and get an understanding of what's going on inside you. All of this is the ways they have blessed humanity. Remember that thought. How are they going to bless humanity in this situation? So a few verses later in Genesis 12, 7, Abram had gone to Haran. Finally his father dies. So then he comes down to Shechem, the land that God has given him. And there God appeared to him in Shechem and said to your descendants, I will give this land. Not to the Arabs. They're the descendants. Some of them are the descendants of Canaan. Some of them are descendants of other branches of the descendants of Shem. But the Lord appears to Abram and says, I'm giving your descendants this land. And so he built an altar and gave thanks to God. In Genesis 15, 13, he reiterated that promise, made the covenant, and says, I'm going to take them out of the land for 400 years while they will be afflicted. Well, why is God going to do that? I don't want to be one of God's children if I'm going to get afflicted for 400 years in slavery. That's how modern man thinks. But see, the descendants of Abraham had started intermarrying with the Canaanites in violation of God's standard. And so God had to protect them so they wouldn't disappear into the woodwork, so to speak. He had to put them somewhere where the native people, the Egyptians, despised them so much they wouldn't eat in the same room with them. And so he had to put him there because that would force them to stay together, to marry within the family, and God could protect them. And in 400 years, they grew to about two and a half to three million people, which is remarkable. They had an extremely high fertility rate, birth rate, and low death rate. So for 400 years, they are there. And then God says, and also the nation whom they serve I will judge. See, the Egyptians were some of the most pagan rebels against God in the ancient world. And God judged them. See, He is allowing the Israelites to go through affliction, and then He will judge the Egyptians. And that's what happens through the ten plagues. And in the fourth generation, God promised they shall return here for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Did that happen? That's exactly what happened. You see, God is a God who makes promises and because he's omnipotent, he can keep the promises. He made a promise to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant that this would be an everlasting covenant. And God is keeping that promise. He may take Israel out of the land, but he warned them about this. In Exodus 19, 4, in the lead up to the giving of the law and the Ten Commandments, he talked to the Israelites. He said, You saw what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all the people, for all the earth is mine. In Leviticus, he outlines what those blessings would be. And he says, you shall not make idols for yourselves, neither a carved image or a sacred pillar, nor shall you rear up for yourselves, nor shall you set up an engraved stone in your land to bow down to it. And he goes on to say, you'll keep my Sabbaths, you'll do this, you'll do that, you'll do this other thing. And I will set my tabernacle among you. My soul will not abhor you. And I will walk with you and be your God. And you're going to be blessed beyond measure. So what was the condition? You shall not make idols for yourself. What did they do? Well, we've seen it when we study the book of Judges. They went right back into idolatry within a generation after coming into the promised land. And so God had also promised judgment if they were disobedient. And this is a long section, and it's horrific, and I'm not going to go through all of it. But God said, if you don't obey me and observe my commandments, if you despise my statutes, then I will abhor you, and I will do this to you, I will appoint terror over you, wasting disease, and fever shall consume you." And he goes on, later he says, if you don't obey with me, about four times he says, and if you continue to not obey me, and the last time, the fifth time he says, if you do not obey me, then I will chastise you seven times for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols." Is that what's going on now? No. That's what happened in 722 B.C. when the Assyrian Empire was used by God to destroy the northern kingdom. It happened again in 586 B.C. when he used the Babylonians to bring punishment upon Israel. And he promised that he would scatter them among the nations. The Latin word for scattering is diaspora. They're in the diaspora now, but God has begun to bring them back because in Deuteronomy 30 verse 1 he says, now when it happens that you've experienced the blessing and the curse, verse 2, and you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice, then verse 3, Then the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you. That is yet in the future. But God is building towards that because he has been bringing them back into the land for the last couple of hundred years. So in conclusion to this, we see that the Jewish people are still God's chosen people. Second, the Jewish people will never be driven off the face of the earth. So whatever else happens, Hamas is not going to win. The Muslims are not going to win. Israel is going to win because God's not going to let them be driven out of the land. God is still using the Jewish people to bless the world. Now some people say, oh, well, wait a minute. God can send them out of the land two or three or four or five or six times. No, he can't because when he brings them back at the end of the tribulation, according to Isaiah 11, 11 says, when I bring you back the second time, that's at the end of the tribulation. Well, when did he bring him back the first time? Well, it's not with Nehemiah. Nehemiah only brought about 40,000 with him. And then a few years later there was about another 25,000 that came. So that can't be the first return. It was so minuscule compared to what's happening today. Almost 50% of the Jews in the world now live in Israel. So the fourth point is If they're strong and they drive out and defeat Hamas as ISIS was defeated, then they will be a blessing to the entire Arab world. I didn't say Muslim world, I said Arab world. That doesn't include Iran. The Egyptians don't want Hamas. The Syrians have enough trouble just with Hezbollah and they've been beaten up so bad in the last few years that they don't need a Hamas. The Arab Emirates don't want Hamas. Saudi Arabians don't want Hamas. None of the other Arabs want Hamas. So if Israel will defeat them completely, it will bring a great blessing to the Middle East, to all of these Arab states. Now I'm going to go through this pretty quick because most of you have heard me do this and I have a a long lesson online on the interdependence, interchangeability, and interconnection, rather, of Jewish and Christian Zionism. But God began moving to bring the Israelites, bring the Jews back to their homeland around 1600 AD, 400 years ago. Things don't move fast. You had the rise of the British Restoration Movement, which was a desire among the Puritans and among the Protestants in England that really got to roll around the 1640s when they began to welcome the Jews back into the land. And they believed that God's plan was to restore the Jewish people to their historic homeland in the Middle East. That continued for 200 years and then in 1797 to 1801 when Napoleon invaded North Africa and then the Middle East it got people thinking about Armageddon and the end times and all of a sudden it brought about a restored look at the Jewish people. From 1800 to 1820 you had the beginning of Jews who were saying well maybe we don't need to wait for the Messiah before we go back. And they were beginning to say maybe we need to go back to our land. And also at that same time Christians began to look to Palestine as a way to evangelize Jews that would come there in the future. In 1840 a mission was established in Jerusalem and they bought the land where Christ Church now stands and built Christ Church. That's when it began. At the same time, unbeknownst to the Christians, Jewish leaders in the Pale of Settlement and in Western Europe began calling for a return to Israel without the Messiah. From 1840 to 1880, there were increasing programs of persecution in Russia. Because of that, the Jews were leaving. Some were going into Western Europe. That's the story of the Fiddler on the Roof, and then Some were going into the Middle East. Throughout the Ottoman period, including the 1800s, the Ottomans were not Arabs. And the Ottomans were such harsh, irresponsible leaders that the land was horrible. Some of us may remember, I certainly remember back in the 60s that there were these commercials on TV to donate to these projects to plant new trees in Israel because there weren't any trees. They don't do that anymore. The reason there weren't any trees was that under the Ottoman Empire, every tree on your property was taxed. And so what did they do? They got rid of the trees. And so all of the land just turned into a marsh in some places and a desert in other places. And you didn't have, one estimate was that there were only a handful of Arabs maybe 3,000 or 4,000 Arabs that actually lived there that weren't Bedouin that migrated. And so there were very few Palestinians. The Ottomans and others were not Arabs. So there's no Arab presence there. At the beginning of the 20th century, a demographic study indicated that 90% of the Arabs that lived in Palestine had come there themselves or their parents came there as migrant workers. Before that, they weren't there. At the end of World War I, the British issued the Balfour Declaration, which wasn't a legal document, but it was incorporated into the British mandate later that was voted on by the League of Nations, which made it a legal document. In 1896, Theodor Herzl published the book called Der Judenstaat, or An Alten Neuen Land, arguing that there needed to be a Jewish state. He couldn't get anywhere with it until a Christian named William Heckler came along, who was the Anglican chaplain in the embassy in Vienna. And he got various things done. So you have the Balfour Declaration, And the primary motivation came from the religious beliefs of the war cabinet in World War I. And although there were other factors present, their primary motivation was to help get the Jewish people back into the land. This is just what it looks like. His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. Now that's not a law, but that verbiage is incorporated in stronger language in a couple of places. It uses the word the historic national homeland in the prelude or the preamble to the British Mandate. All the signers were Christian except for one who was Edward Montague. He voted against it. And everybody else had a strong Christian heritage. It is in this British Mandate preamble where it agrees that the mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917 by the government of His Britannic Majesty. When the League of Nations voted on it, that made it international law. But what happened in the 30s is Chaim Weizmann, who was the head of the group of Jews that ran them before they were a nation, said, we'd settle for two acres just to have something. He'd settle for anything. He ignored the law. But this is still law because it's never been rescinded in history. In Article 2 of the Mandate, as laid down in the preamble, So that is exactly what they said. So you have this timeline where you go through, at the end of World War I, you have the San Remo meeting, which creates the boundaries for the Middle East. And the Churchill White Paper, because of a lot of different factors, they ended up giving all of the land east of the Jordan to the Hashemites to fulfill their promises made in relation to Lawrence of Arabia. But on this map, you see Palestine here, but it's not a state. It's just a territory. You have Syria here. This is all just Arabia, that whole area. So there's never been a Palestinian state. In 1922, originally both were part of the Balfour Declaration. All of this was supposed to go to Israel. But in order to pay off the Arabs for their help in World War I, the yellow part was given to the Hashemites. So that's what happened. And then you get another division in July 37 with the Peel Commission so that all the Jews would be left with is just the orange area. And that's how it was when things started. Another thing that we need to ask as we look at this, we've looked at it, we've seen the biblical basis, we've seen the theology, that God has not deserted his people. They're still his people. And all of the promises in the prophets of their future return to the land will be fulfilled. But what can we do now in the midst of this war? Well, I've had several suggestions made to me by our Israeli friends. One is to go to this particular website. Barb will get the information and put a link up there. She usually does. And This came from Hazy. A lot of you know Hazy. She's our tour at Yad Vashem. And she said that we should contact the International Red Cross and demand that they visit the Israeli hostages in Gaza. They include elderly women, children, infants, and elderly Holocaust survivors. And they need to demand that the International Red Cross does its job. Another idea that Amos told me about was that a lot of people want to give money to the FIDF. That's the Friends of the IDF. That's Americans who are supporting the IDF soldiers because the Israeli government doesn't give the soldiers a lot of stuff. So they still need a lot of personal items, toothbrushes, toothpaste, lots of other stuff, buying their uniforms. And a lot of money is flooding in right now to the IDF through these various organizations. But 11 of these kibbutzim in Gaza were devastated. The fathers, the breadwinners are dead. Who's going to work? Where are they going to work? How are they going to rebuild? What are they going to do? and so they're the ones who are going to need help and for a while. So there are some agencies that are being set up through which, and Amos will give me the information, donations can be made that will help them. Right now, for those of you who just went to Israel with me, and we stayed at the David Hotel down in the Dead Sea, the David Hotel is hosting all of the survivors from Be'Ari, kibbutz that I talked about on Sunday morning and earlier today. Another thing that we can do is be in contact with our congressional member. This is one of the emphases in AIPAC. Now, some people have issues with AIPAC, but that's because a lot of people don't understand their mission. They have a very narrow focus. Their mission is to support the American members of Congress to stand strong in their alliance with Israel and to encourage legislation that strengthens that alliance. Some people have said, well, they're for a two-state solution. They're for a two-state solution because the Israeli government for the last 15 or 20 years has been for a two-state solution. They don't get involved in Israeli politics. They'll support whatever the Israeli government wants, whatever the flavor of the year is. And I've talked to some conservatives. Well, I just don't like AIPAC because they support a two-state solution. You've missed the whole point. That's not their focal point. Their focal point is to strengthen the relationship of the US with an emphasis on the US and strengthening our alliance with Israel. And Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. So the question should be, if you don't support the alliance between the US and Israel, Who are you going to support? If you don't like AIPAC, well, who's going to take their place? Because it's the largest and most prestigious, even though they've had a few black eyes over the last couple of years, even though they've made some mistakes. They're still the strongest and most influential and most respected pro-Israel group in Washington. So who are you going to take in support of that? Do you really believe that the U.S. needs to back Israel? But we don't always get to choose people that always do things the way we want them to be done. But there's something darker on the horizon. It could be I'm not going to sit up here and say it's all doom and gloom and I know what's going to happen. I don't. But people a lot smarter than I am have been reading the handwriting on the wall that we could be headed to World War III. We don't know that. When I woke up to those first explosions in Kiev a year and a half ago, my first thought was, is this like Sarajevo, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and that kicked off World War I? Am I hearing the first sounds of explosions at World War III? We don't know what's going to happen, but if China and Iran and Russia have colluded intentionally on providing the software necessary to negate Israel's alert system. That's pretty serious. There are a lot of things that are going on. The rapture is going to occur at some time, but God doesn't say when. And there could be some real testing between now and then. And are you ready for it? And I don't mean do you have enough food stored up, and I don't mean are you a survivalist, and I don't mean make sure you have enough ammunition for all your guns. Are you spiritually prepared? And every now and then we get a wake-up call in our lives that there's a lot going on at a broader level than we take into account every day. And we don't know what tomorrow holds or the next day. And we need to be prepared for that spiritually. And these are the hard questions because everybody's so busy. Everybody has so many things to do, especially if you're a family with kids. You have all their things to do. Sometimes you hear people say, well, you know, when people die, they never say, I wish I had worked more. They usually say something like, I wish I'd spent more time with my family. But they never take into account what's really the thing they should be saying. I wish I had walked closer with the Lord. I wish I knew the scriptures better. I wish I understood what was going to happen better. I wish I had really put my focus on spiritual truth and not on enjoying everything in this life to a distraction from spiritual truth. We live in an era where church attendance And in one way, I think it's a good thing because most churches are just teaching garbage. But in the churches that are teaching the truth, their numbers are dwindling. Their hair is grayer. All kinds of things are going on. And the next generation isn't as large because we didn't have a baby boom like we had when a lot of us were born. And so the numbers are diminishing. And the people who are left need to be in Bible class. because it's what's right for their soul. And they need to be doing what I always say to do. Read your Bible. Memorize Scripture daily and weekly. Make sure you are listening to the teaching of the Word, preferably in the company of others, because the Scripture says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. because we get encouraged when there are more than a handful of people in Bible class. Look around, there's a lot of people that want to know the word just like I do. That encourages us. And so we need to make those spiritual priorities our priorities. The other thing is we need to ignore the prophecy pornographers. You can hear them already. Well maybe this is Ezekiel 37 or 38. We got Russia involved, we got Persia involved. Yeah, but what about Ethiopia and Putt and Libya and Togarmah and all of these others that are mentioned in Ezekiel 37? Quit looking for prophecy to be fulfilled right before your very eyes. As Ed Hindson used to say, we're not looking for the Antichrist, we're looking for Jesus Christ and we better be ready because we're going to be with our Lord forever. And that's where our priorities need to be. So as we face what's happening in Gaza, it comes down to it could happen here. I'm waiting any day to hear that sleeper cells are activated. Hamas leader yesterday called for an uprising of Muslims around the world in support of Hamas tomorrow. Keep your powder dry. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you that we have an understanding of history as you've laid it out in your word. And you are a God who knows what will happen and tells us what will happen. And you are a God who will fulfill his promises to the letter. You are not a God who breaks his word. And so, Father, we pray that tonight as we leave here and as we rethink our priorities, which we need to do every so often, that we would realize that we need to shift our priorities to where your word and our relationship to you takes priority over everything else in life. That we are too often too distracted by the cares of life. We need to model it for our kids. We need to model it for our grandkids. And we need to grow closer to you because that is where true life, quality of life takes place. So Father, we pray that we would be challenged by what we've learned tonight. In Christ's name, amen.