We’re going to keep on talking today as we did on a previous Little Lesson about modern-day Israel. By listening to some modern-day Christians, you’d think that God loves the people in Israel more than He loves those who have repented of their sins and believed in Jesus!
I’m telling you, it’s a fact, and we hear Evangelical preachers say, “God divinely gave those people that land. It’s their divine right to have that land in Israel, and so anyone who disputes that is fighting against God.”
When modern preachers say that, I’m honestly stunned and shocked. I wonder how much of the Bible they have read, because God is a moral, ethical God, and when God originally gave Canaan’s land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, there were huge moral principles at play.
Huge Moral Principles at Play
God said to Abraham when He took a little tour of part of Canaan’s land, “I’m going to give this land to your descendants, but not yet, because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. We’re not sending anybody into dispossess the Canaanites yet, because I’m showing mercy to people who I want to show mercy to.”
The iniquity of one group of them, the Amorites, is not complete. It hasn’t reached its full perversion yet. They aren’t actually throwing their children en masse, their babies into fires in devotion to their gods. They’re not actually yet en masse having sex with animals and casual sex with their closest relatives.
This is the degradation that they would fall into as the decades and centuries passed, and when God sent the children of Israel out of Egypt to possess Canaan’s land, He said, “It’s because I’m using you as a tool of my judgment on some very depraved people, whom I’ve had mercy on for generation after generation.”
God is a Moral God
In fact, in the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, there were huge moral implications. Were there not? Sure there were, because the Israelites were suffering as slaves there for so long. God is a moral God. God told the people of Israel, “I’m going to give you this land, but it’s not because of your righteousness, because you’re not all that righteous, actually. It’s because of the wickedness of the inhabitants that the land is going to spew them out.”
God warned, “If you ever go down their path, the land’s going to spew you out as well.” Guess what? It did, because God never changed. A moral, righteous, ethical, upright God cannot be a racist. He cannot show favoritism to one ethnicity over another ethnicity.
God sent his prophets repeatedly and warned Israel, and when Israel was divided in half, of course between the southern and northern half, Judah, and then what became known as Israel Ephraim, God warned them through the prophets again and again, and ultimately sent foreign invaders in to deport them.
The northern tribes of Israel were deported before the southern tribes were by invading powers. They suffered as they were scattered amongst the nations and the land was left for others to live in. Exactly what God said is exactly what He did, because He’s moral. He’s ethical. He’s righteous. When the people of Israel acted like the people that they had dispossessed, they were dispossessed.
Has God Changed?
Here’s my question for everybody who’s “rah-rahing” modern day political issues no matter what they would do: has God changed? Are there no moral or ethical principles at play here? Did God expect more of the ancient people who live in that land, who identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob than modern-day people?
That’s impossible! God doesn’t change. He’s not a racist. I say if God has been involved in this rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948 and its statehood and its establishment since then, it’s not ‘because’ of, it’s ‘in spite’ of.
Was the Statehood of Israel in 1948 a Divine Fulfillment?
If you just study the history of all that lead up to 1948 and all that’s happened since 1948, it’s not all just clear cut and dry that the Jewish people always did what was right and all the other guys were the bad guys. Oh no, you’re fooling yourself if you say that or think that.
Even to make the assumption that the statehood of Israel in 1948 was some divine fulfillment of prophecy can be debated as well. Sure, because if you look at the prophecies that seem to revolve around the subsequent gathering of the Jews and the people of Israel after the gathering that you read about (like, for example, Daniel’s prophecy that 70 years after a certain decree God would bring a percentage of people back)…
You can read all about this repatriation of those people in Nehemiah and Ezra and so forth, and the rebuilding of the walls in the city of Jerusalem and so on. He didn’t bring them all back, and even though there are eight million Jews today in Israel, there’s Jews scattered about in 100 and some odd countries still in the world, so they haven’t all been regathered. Many of those prophecies that people say, “See, this is the fulfillment, 1948 is the fulfillment,” many of those prophecies speak of a simultaneous if not previous spiritual awakening amongst the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and you haven’t seen that in Israel.
Be on the Side of Jesus
I know some folks are talking about more Jews are coming to Christ than ever before, but still less than, I think it’s 1/20th in 1% of all people in Israel identify as Christian. There has not been any national spiritual awakening there, and we expect it according to Scripture.
What I’m saying is, when you side with Israel, saying, “Well, God brought them back. God’s favoring them. We ought to be on their side if we’re going to be on God’s side.” No, no. If you want to be on God’s side, be on the side of Jesus. Be on the side of morality. Okay?
When people say, “Well, they’re the apple of God’s eye, and whoever curses them God’s going to curse,” well you need a little lesson in Bible interpretation. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, I’m saying this just to provoke your thinking.
In our next Little Lesson, we’ll talk about that “apple of the eye” scripture, and that scripture, “whoever curses Israel, God will curse”. Let’s look at the whole Bible, not just pull some verses out of their context. Okay, thanks so much for joining me! God bless you.
