NO BIG SURPRISE
Israel, The Mid-East And The Coming World Peace (Part 1)
You hear about it every day. Conflict in the middle-east. The terrorism of 9/11 was the fruit of the conflict that continues even today. As I write this we hear of rockets being reigned down on Israel by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. We sit tense wondering if Israel will invade to take out the missile launchers and whether this might escalate into a more global conflict. Or worse, that Iran may acquire an nuclear bomb and take us to the brink of destruction.
Biblical prophecy is not my forte but in the next couple of blog posts let me try to give you a bit of a historical context for what you see every day on newscasts and read about on Face Book, Twitter and your news feeds. The fact that Jerusalem and the middle-east are constantly in the news shouldn’t come as a total surprise to those familiar with the Christian Scriptures. To the secular news media these events have their roots in the past generation or two and are a cause for great concern for the peace of the world. The mid-east, even in the secular world, is seen as the powder keg of the world. Yet, events happening there today are not a surprise to the Sovereign God of the universe. As a matter of fact, God Himself has so arranged these events for His own purposes that they might ultimately bring Him glory.
Back To The Future
To understand the situation in and around Jerusalem today, and in the future, we have to go back to the very first book of the Bible, right back to the fall of Adam and Eve. It was there at the very dawn of human history, when sin first entered the world that God began to unveil His loving and eternal plan of redemption. Sin shattered the peace in the garden and brought Adam and Eve into conflict with each other and God. After pronouncing the curse on sin, God gives the first incredible promise that He Himself would provide a way of forgiveness. A way to redeem us out of the mess caused by sin.
Sin’s entrance into the world, and the conflict that comes with it was no surprise to God. He was prepared and told Adam and Eve as He cursed the serpent, "An I will put enmity between you and the women, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." 1
Biblical scholars consider this to be the first promise of a coming Messiah, a Savour who would come into the world to bruise the head of Satan, bring forgiveness and restore us to peace with God.
There is in scripture what theologians call "progressive revelation." It simply means that God reveals Himself and His plans to us in Scripture a little bit at a time. Adam probably didn’t understand the implications of this promise other than that God was making a promise to overcome the enemy. Later in scripture, as we will see, God reveals his plan to establish the Nation of Israel through which Christ the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God would come into the world and overcome sin and Satan and restore God’s creation.
A Land And A Promise
Now let’s fast forward several thousand years2. Man has multiplied and spread through much of the world. God has not forgotten His promise nor of fallen humanities need of a Redeemer. He begins to prepare for the Messiah, Jesus Christ to come into the world. In what is now modern Iraq there is a man named Abram. Abram was likely an idol worshipper but God choose Him to be the founder of a great nation through which the Messiah would come.
About 400 years before the time of Moses and over 3,800 years ago God said to Abram, who would be later called Abraham, "Now the Lord said to Abram, ;Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 3
4 Promises That Impact Today’s News
There are four significant and specific promises God made to Abraham that directly impact what you see and read everyday in the news and especially in times like these where there are heightened hostilities between Israel, its Arab neighbours and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
1. A Land "to the land that I will show you"
God promises Abraham a land where he and his descendants would settle. To make a long story short, that Land is basically present day Israel.4 And this is the powder keg of the modern conflict. It is Israel’s claim on this land that is at the very centre of the conflict between Israel, the Arabs nations, and as we see this week, Hamas and the Palestinians. It is this land, promised by God to the descendants of Abraham, the Jews, almost 4,000 years ago that is the world’s most dangerous powder keg in the 21st century.
2. A Great Nation And I will make of you a great nation
God promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation. And indeed, the Jews have become a great nations with millions of Jews around the world today. God wasn’t just blessing Abraham, He was working out His eternal purpose.5
3. A Great Blessing make your name great, so that you will be a blessing
God’s plan was to bring redemption through the descendants of Abraham, the Jews.
God sovereignly chose that His Son, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, would be born into the family of Abraham. Christ, the Saviour blesses all nations because all can be forgiven and reconciled to God through faith in Him and His atoning sacrifice of the Cross. This was God’s plan from the beginning.
4. A Blessing Or A Curse I will bless those who bless you, ..
Israel has a special place in God’s redemptive plan. He chose that the Messiah, the Saviour of the world would be born a Jew. Therefore, there is a blessing for those who bless Israel and a curse for those who do not.6 Because of it’s redemptive significance, Israel is the apple of God’s eye.
One Big Problem With The Promise
Don’t you just love a good mystery? because now the plot thickens. Okay, we’ve got Abraham in the land that is now present day Israel along with parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. God has promised this land to Abraham and promised Him that the Messiah will come through Him and all the nations of the earth will be blessed. So far, so good. Right? Wrong!
The conflict you see unfolding before you daily in the mid-east stretches back and finds its roots in the days of Abraham himself. Abraham’s wife Sarah was getting old and had no children. Rather than wait for God’s timing, she and Abraham jumped the gun and took matters into their own hands.7 Genesis 16 tells us of a plan concocted by Sarah that her maid Hagar could be a surrogate mother and bare a child for Sarah.
Hagar has a son by Abraham and calls his name Ishmael. This is where the story gets really interesting. You see the descendants of Ishmael also become a great people. They become the Arab people.8 Ah, now you see how deep the root of the conflict in the middle-east really is.
God’s promise had been that even though Sarah was way beyond child bearing years, she would bear a son through who would come this great nation.9 The promise of a great nation was to come through the offspring of Sarah not Hagar.10
True to God’s promise, Sarah does have son and calls him Isaac. Later Isaac has a son named Jacob who becomes heir to the promise. Interestingly, in time his name is changed to Israel who has twelve sons and thus the twelve tribes of Israel. The Jewish nation.
There you have it. One son of Abraham, Ishmael, from Hagar becomes the Arab peoples. The other son, Isaac, becomes the Jewish people. The seeds of the mid-east conflict of today were planted over 3,800 years ago between these two sons of Abraham.
God’s Sovereign Rule
We’ll pick this real world drama up in the next post, but for now, let me assure you that none of this, and none of what you see happening in the mid-east today comes as a big surprise to our sovereign God. This was all laid out and seen by God before Adam and Eve showed up in the garden. Somehow in His sovereignty and the responsibility of fallen humanity, God is bringing together His great eternal plan of redemption.
There is no need to fear. No need to question the final outcome. God is sovereignly in charge not only of the middle-east, but in your life and in your circumstances. Do not fear but trust in His sovereign goodness.
( Check back on Friday for Part 2 -- Israel's Trilogy)
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1. Genesis 3:15
2. If you follow an evolutionary theory (which I do not) then there’s no way you can reconcile the Biblical record between the time of Adam and the time of Abraham. This creates significant problems for Theistic Evolutionist who seek to reconcile Creation with Evolution and must account for millions of years of evolutionary time. Another one of those problems is significant in that it runs into conflict with historicity and inspiration of the Genesis record in Genesis 1-11. This blog isn’t about that debate so I’ll leave it up to you to consider on your own.
3. Genesis 12:1-3
4. This promised land covers all of present day Israel, huge chunks of Lebanon including Damascus and Beirut, the Lebanon Mountains, all of the Gaza Strip, all of the West Bank and much of modern day Jordan etc. etc.
5. There was nothing in and of Abraham himself that caused God to choose Him. This was a sovereign decision of God not based on Abraham’s merit but simply on God’s desire to have His Son incarnated into the world.
6. Without being too political here, this does not mean that everything modern Israel does is right or that we should support it even if does wrong. Nonetheless, we recognize the Jews, descendants of Abraham, as God’s special people. They are the people to whom God Himself promised the Land that they now occupy and God has clearly said that He will bless those who bless Israel. Every person and every nation should seek to bless Israel.
7. Trouble always follows when we don’t walk in trust and obedience to God.
8. Genesis 16-8-12
9. Through whom also would come the Messiah, the Saviour.
10. Genesis 17:1-8; 15-21
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