Moshe C.: Sivan - A Sacred Promise [2024/5784]

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Moshe C..

Shalom from Jerusalem. I'm sure by now you've heard about the massacre that happened here in Israel on October the 7th. The events of the past five weeks require a response. How did we get to this place of intense hate and savage murder? Is this a 20th-century development? Is the solution to this conflict, this Arab-Jew conflict, not decades old? It's not hundreds of years old. It is thousands of years old. If the saying "the past is prologue" is true, then we have to go back. Back to Abraham. The present-day conflict started with Abraham. How is that? The Bible states in Genesis chapter 12: 

"The Lord had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you.'" So Abram went as the Lord had told him.

Notice several things. Abraham, or Abram, was told by God to leave his homeland and go to this land. He did not come on his own initiative. He did not come to stake a claim here in Canaan. Secondly, God would bless Abraham, and he, in turn, would bless others, even the whole world. So far, so good. So how is this present conflict Abraham's fault? Patience, my friends, patience. Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans at 75 years of age to go to Canaan, present-day Israel/Palestine. Eleven years later, God says to him:

"A son whose your own flesh and blood will be your heir."

Up to this point, Abraham and Sarah were childless. God also says to Abraham:

"I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it."

(Genesis 15:7) Right after this encounter with God, Sarah tells Abraham, "Let's use a surrogate to carry on your name." Abram agrees, and he has sex with Hagar, and she becomes pregnant. She runs away from Sarah because Sarah is making her life unbearable. Sarah is jealous of the fact that Hagar is pregnant and she was not. Before Hagar gives birth, God appears to her and says: 

"Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren."

(Genesis 16:11-12) Hagar returns to her mistress Sarah as directed by God. She, Ishmael, Abraham, and Sarah lived together without any drama for 13 years. It is then that God appears to Abraham again. He tells him that Sarah will give birth to a son. She laughs at this preposterous idea. She's 89 years old, and Abe is 99. God also tells Abraham to circumcise Ishmael, the men in his house, and himself. God makes another promise to Abraham in chapter 17 of Genesis, verse 8: "The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be your God." God names the place Canaan and states the terms. It will be an everlasting possession. It is God's gift to Abraham and his descendants. But which descendants?

One year later, (Genesis 21) Sarah gives birth to Isaac. Isaac is circumcised on the eighth day, and four years later, he's weaned. It is at this event that Sarah notices Ishmael molesting her son. She's furious. She tells Abraham: "Kick Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp." She does not want Ishmael anywhere near Isaac. After prompting from God, Abraham sends him off into the desert. After the water runs out, Hagar and Ishmael wait for death. God hears her son's cry and saves them from certain death. God tells Hagar: 

"I will make him a great nation."

(Genesis 21:18)

After this drama, God tests Abraham's faith with the sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah. Abraham was going to go through with the sacrifice when the angel of the Lord stops him, and a substitute is offered up instead—a ram caught in the thicket. Sarah dies and is buried in the cave of Machpelah. After a period of mourning, Abraham gets a wife for Isaac. Her name is Rebecca.

Isaac marries Rebecca, and she gives birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. God appears to Isaac in Genesis chapter 26. There's another famine in the land of Canaan, like in the time of his father Abraham. He decides to go down to Egypt; however, God says:

"Do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants, I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I'll make your descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and give them all these lands. And through your offspring, all nations on Earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees, and my instructions."

End of quote. So Isaac stayed in Gerar. his promise was made to Sarah's son, not Hagar's son, Ishmael. Subsequently, God appears to Jacob in chapter 28. Jacob is going to his uncle's house in Haran because he has incurred the wrath of Esau. Esau has threatened to kill him. It is in Bethel that God tells Jacob:

 

"I am the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west, to the east, to the north, and to the south. All peoples on Earth will be blessed through you and your offspring."

End quote. You know the rest. Jacob has 12 sons. They become the 12-tribe confederacy, which will become the nation of Israel. After 400 years of slavery in Egypt, they are miraculously delivered from Pharaoh's oppressive hand. The Passover commemorates the experience. They wander for 40 years in the wilderness. They cross the Jordan River and conquer the land of Canaan.

According to Paul in Acts chapter 13, Israel has had judges ruling over them for 450 years. Saul was their king for 40 years, then David and his descendants ruled in this land from around 1000 BC to 586 BC. Jerusalem is destroyed, and the people of Israel go into the Babylonian captivity. A remnant returns to the land, is subject to Persia and Greece. There's a brief period of self-rule under the Maccabees—that's for about 100 years or so. The Roman invasion in 63 BC ends all Jewish aspirations for self-rule. After the Temple is destroyed in 70 AD, the vanquished Jews are banned from Jerusalem and scattered throughout the Roman world. In 135 AD, Hadrian renamed the area "Syria Palestina," obliterating any connection to the Jews. The land had been formerly called Judea. It remained under Roman rule until the Muslim invasion in 639 AD.

There was an uneasy peace between the Christians (Greek Orthodox) and the Muslims until the Crusaders arrived in 1092. Jews were allowed to live in Palestina, but access to the Temple Mount in particular, and Jerusalem in general, was restricted. The Crusaders, Latin Christians, slaughtered Jews, Greek Christians, and Muslims on their way to the Holy Land. Finally, the Crusaders were defeated and later expelled by Salah ad-Din in 1187. Jerusalem came back under Muslim control and stayed that way until 1917, when the last Muslim power in the region, the Ottoman Turks, was defeated by the British. During the time of the Ottomans, Jews were coming back to the land little by little, bit by bit, but not to the south, but to the north, in Galilee. They built up Safed, and as I said, they settled in the area in Galilee because they were kind of off-limits to the area south in Jerusalem.

Then how did Palestine become the desolation for so many Jews? Two phrases: anti-Semitism and Zionism. I know this has been long, but bear with me; I'm almost at my end. What is anti-Semitism? The dictionary definition is "hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people." The first recorded act of anti-Semitism is in Exodus chapter 1. The king Pharaoh orders all the Hebrew boy babies killed. Now note well, the Jewish people have gone through some name changes over the millennia. Before the Exodus from Egypt, they were called Hebrews. After the conquest of Canaan, they were called Israelites. After the exile to Babylon, they were called Jews. But back to Pharaoh: this act of genocide is irrational and illogical. Irrational because slaves are wealth—who in their right mind destroys their wealth? Illogical because the Hebrews were not subversive or a threat to Egyptian power. So this anti-Semitism has to be more than that, more than something in a natural. It's almost diabolical, if not truly diabolical—something otherworldly.

The second recorded act of anti-Semitism is in the Book of Esther. Haman wants to wipe out all the Jews in the Persian Empire. He convinces the king to sign a decree, which will result in the annihilation of every man, woman, and child of Jewish stock. By a stroke of luck, or divine intervention, Haman is killed and his plan thwarted. Throughout the last 2,000 years, Jewish blood has been spilled time and time again. Remember the Inquisition? How many Jews were killed by well-meaning Catholics? What about the pogroms in Eastern Europe? If you are an intellectually honest person, you have to ask yourself: why such hatred for the Jew? Jews make up 0.002% of the Earth's present population. They're not a threat to the world. But since the Jew is not wanted anywhere, they came back to their homeland: Palestine, Canaan, Israel.

Another motivator of Aliyah, or coming back to the land, was Zionism. The dictionary defines it as "a movement to reestablish a homeland for Jews in Palestine." At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Jewish and Christian voices were calling for the return of the Jews to Palestine. The Jews saw no future for themselves in Europe, especially after the vicious acts of anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Even in Western Europe, Jews were discriminated against. An example of that is the Dreyfus Affair. After World War I ended, Britain made promises to both the Jews and the Arabs—promises which they did not keep. The early Zionists missed opportunities to create alliances with the Arabs in Palestine. They did not see their goals as mutually inclusive. Tension developed between the groups, and then bloodshed.

World War II made the need for a Jewish homeland more urgent. The slaughter of six million Jews was a major catalyst in bringing a Jewish state into being. The United Nations approved the Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947. "The Arab state would embrace 4,500 square miles with 84,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. The Jewish state would encompass 5,500 square miles, most of which was desert, by the way—538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. The two states were to be linked in an economic union to share a joint currency, joint railroads, interstate highways, as well as postal, telephone, and telegraphic services." End quote. The Jews accepted this plan. The Arabs did not.

After the British left Palestine in May 1948, and Israel declared nationhood, war broke out with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. Their goal: from the river to the sea, Palestine would be free of Jews. The fledgling state should have been wiped out. Why wasn't it? In 1967 and 1973, similar attempts were made to free Palestine of Jews. Why did the attempts by these invading Arab forces fail? Luck? Divine intervention? Time doesn’t allow me to go into all the different attempts to create a two-state solution. All have been dead on arrival.

But what does the future hold? I'd like to turn to the Bible and read from Zechariah 14. If you have your Bible, you can follow along with me:

"A day of the Lord is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights on the day of battle. On that day, his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south. You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. On that day, there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. On that day, living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it east to the Dead Sea and half of it west to the Mediterranean Sea, in summer and in winter. The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day, there will be one Lord, and his name the only name. The whole land, from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem, will become like the Arabah, but Jerusalem will be raised up high from the Benjamin Gate to the site of the First Gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the royal winepresses, and will remain in its place. It will be inhabited; never again will it be destroyed. Jerusalem will be secure. This is the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they are standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On that day, people will be stricken by the Lord with great panic. They will seize each other by the hand and attack one another. Judah too will fight at Jerusalem. The wealth of all the surrounding nations will be collected—great quantities of gold and silver and clothing. A similar plague will strike the horses and mules, the camels and donkeys, and all the animals in those camps."

could continue to read, but let me summarize what the rest of it says: After this miraculous deliverance by the Lord, all the nations that came up against Jerusalem will come up here to observe the Feast of Sukkot. Israel, at that time, will be defenseless. We're not sure when this will happen, but as you can see, there's a lot of anti-Semitism in the world right now, with people calling for the destruction of the nation of Israel. And all the nations, including America, will come against the Jews here in Israel. Why? To wipe the nation off the map. But then something miraculous happens. God—Yeshua, we believe it's him—he says, the angel said to the disciples when they were seeing him go:

"The same Yeshua you see ascending will come in the same way that he left."

He will descend on the Mount of Olives, destroy the enemies of his people, and the surviving peoples will have to come up to Jerusalem yearly to pay homage. 

That's all well and good for the future, Gary, but what can we do now? First, pray. Pray for reconciliation to happen between the sons of Ishmael and Isaac. Pray for the hate and anger to decrease. Pray for the salvation of both parties. Second, give. Money and clothing are good, a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on, a place to lay one's head—not just to the Jews, but to the Arabs as well. Third, put into practice Proverbs 31:8-9:

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."

End quote.

These are surely times that will try, and are trying, men and women's souls. May God grant us the grace to do what is right.

Shalom.