Before I read the scripture, you'll remember maybe or maybe
not, that that last week I had said I was feeling led to
address the situation in the Middle East, particularly the
conflict between Israel and Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah, from
the pulpit. And I am proceeding with that
today. I will.
For what it's worth, this is the hardest sermon I've ever had to
prepare and I pray God's grace upon us as as I share it that
anything that's just of me that it would be quickly forgotten
and everything that's of God would would take root in US and
grow. I, I do want to say that I'm
Full disclosure upfront. I'm taking sides in that
conflict in in the sermon today, but I I really don't believe I'm
doing this out of partisan politics.
I my political beliefs are all over the all over the place and
some of my beliefs align with things the Democrat Party does
and teaches. Some of my beliefs align with
things Republican Party does and teaches.
Some of my beliefs say, you know, neither party wants to
have anything to do with there is no party large, prominent or
small that I am aware of that, that I wholeheartedly brace and
endorse everything they say and do.
So, so I, I, I what I have sought in this is to share a, a
biblical faithful framework that we can use to analyze this and
other situations. And I believe that framework
takes us in a specific direction.
I really don't care about the political parties behind it,
which which operate out of motives that that generally have
little or nothing to do with with Scripture in the Bible,
except to the extent that those parties can use those to promote
their agenda. And now I don't want to go down
that route either, but I'm treading as close to this line
as I ever care to get. If I, if I cross that line,
please see that as an inadvertent crossing of that
line. I don't mean to, I will say
again, as I've said before, you know, no one's ever going to go
to hell for disagreeing with me. And, and if what I say today you
take issue with and you want to talk about that, I am happy to
do that. I, there's a lot of, I went way
too long at Chester and, and, and so I got to even shorten it
down a little bit here, but there's a lot of information and
data behind what I'm saying. But I don't have time in this to
give source citations for everything.
If you want source citations and want to talk about where I got
the information, we can talk about that too.
But it, it'll just slow down things too much if I, if I cite
sources for every bit of data and information I present today.
So all of that said, I want to say that upfront by way of, I
don't know, free introduction or disclaimer, maybe just fair
warning, but here we go. The Scripture reading today is
Deuteronomy chapter 15. I'm sorry, Scripture reading
today is Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 15 through 20.
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and
destruction. For I command you today to love
the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep
His commandments, decrees and laws.
Then you will live an increase, and the Lord your God will bless
you in the land that you are entering to possess.
But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you
are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I
declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.
You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan
to enter and possess this day. I call the heavens and the earth
as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and
death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and
your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God.
Listen to His voice and hold fast to Him, for the Lord is
your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore
to give to your father's Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading and to the hearing
of His Word. I only have one slide today and
the rest I have in my notes, so I'm going to have my phone open
a little bit more than I usually do here.
This conflict has been going on for years and years and years
and years and years. It intensified greatly on
October 7th of 2023 and, and I thought briefly about addressing
the conflict at that point, but I discarded it, maybe out of
cowardice, I don't know. This is tough.
This is such a divisive thing. But it also at that time, as
important as it was, as significant it was, it seemed a
long way away from Meggs County, Ohio.
We don't have a substantial Jewish population in Meggs
County. We don't have a substantial
Muslim population in Meggs County.
And the United States was not directedly or actively involved.
And so it seemed, it seemed to be in, in some respects, you
know, not my business to speak or preach on that, given how
little connection we had to it. But things have changed.
Things have changed. the United States has taken an active role
in that conflict now. And even more than that, I had a
recent interaction at a local retail establishment, small
retail establishment. I was standing in line waiting
to check out and a conversation was going on in front of me and
I eavesdropped. I do that because I find it
entertaining. This time I didn't have a whole
lot of choice. The guy was talking very loud
and very energetically. And I, I entered in part way
through the conversation as I heard him saying something to
the effect of, and you know, there's going to be an attack on
American ship in the region and the ship is going to be
destroyed. And it will look like that Iran
did the attacking, but it'll be Israel operating under a false
flag. They're going to run up a flag
of Iran on their ship and attack one of our ships to get us to
enter the war against Iran on their side.
But it'll really be Israel that's attacking us.
And I being who I am, interrupted and said that's
ridiculous. That's not going to happen.
Israel is one of the strongest allies of the United States.
They're not going to attack one of our ships under a false flag
or any other flag. And then he immediately went
into, but don't you know, the Jews control the banks, the Jews
control the media, the Jews control the government.
And he started going on and on. And then the other person who
was present interjected and said, and, you know, in Germany,
they're demonstrating for our freedom in America.
At that point, I had that look on my face like, what?
I had no idea what you're talking about.
I didn't say that out loud. I looked at her and I said,
freedom from what? And she looked at me and said
the Jews and I realized this is a Meg's County issue just as
much as it's an American issue and a Middle Eastern issue and
an Israeli issue, that that the scapegoating of Jews and
anti-Semitism are rearing its ugly head again.
It's been around for thousands of years, and in Christian
nations and Pagan nations and atheistic nations and in Muslim
nations. Not all of that for the past
two, because not all of those kinds of groups have been around
for 2000 years. But over the past 2000 years,
all of those different types of nations have scapegoated Jewish
people to blame them for problems that existed in and
around them and their cultures and in their civilizations.
And egregious acts of violence were done against Jews simply
because they were Jews. And it's back.
It's back. And so I felt the need and
continue to feel the need to address this.
Now what? As I said before, my goal here
is not to address this from a partisan political perspective.
My goal is not even to address it from a a more generally
political National Alliance perspective.
Some histories involved, because history tells us what's been
happening and what's going on and puts things in context.
But really my goal here today is to to give us or remind us of a
faithful biblical framework through which we can analyze,
examine, and respond to this situation as well as many other
similar kinds of situations, whether on a very small personal
level or a global, international kind of level.
And this framework, I believe, is at the very heart of the
Scripture and of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And it really has to do with, and I didn't design things this
way. I hope it's the Holy Spirit and
not just getting too much sun in the heat yesterday.
I really believe that the framework is the question of
life and death, which we've been looking at since we jumped into
this walk through the Bible and the book of Genesis.
Again, I was not planning to preach this sermon as part of
this series. It just worked out that that
what I've been preaching for a few weeks now is relevant to
this today because we see from the very beginning, God is a God
of life. God created the heavens and the
earth, and God brought life into being and then and for humans
themselves, them, us, ourselves. He breathed into us His very
breath of life, and we became living beings.
God treated a garden and placed human beings in the garden where
we had everything that we needed for abundant, peaceful, joyful
life. And they're growing.
In that garden was a tree of life.
But there was another tree, the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. And God said that's the only one
you can't eat from. Don't eat that.
Don't eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
If you do, you will surely die. And they did.
And Adam and Eve brought death into the world and then Cain
took it a step further and causing the death of his
brother. And things just snowballed
downhill and out of control from there until violence, death and
destruction became the normal thing across humanity.
Jesus touched on this issue that goes all the way back to
creation explicitly when he said this.
He said I'm the Good Shepherd. I'm the Good Shepherd.
The sheep know my voice, they know my name.
They said thieves, Thieves come to steal, kill and destroy.
But I have come so that you can have life and have it in all of
its fullness. Life is at the heart of God's
purposes in this earth and among us to bring life, not death.
And I think that gives us a framework for looking at lots of
situations and making decisions in those situations to say, when
we say where is God in this situation, what is God doing?
God is almost always acting to bring life where our enemy, the
devil wants to steal, kill and destroy to bring death.
And that's why Moses, when they were at the edge of the promised
land, they'd spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness.
God freed them from slavery and, and, and they spent 40 years
wandering in the wilderness. Now they're on the verge of
entering the land that God had promised with him, not the
Garden of Eden itself, but a land of prosperity, a land of
plenty of land flowing with milk and honey.
And Moses said, look, you can have life or death when you go
into this land. If you follow God and stay
faithful to him and faithful to his ways of doing things, you
will have life. If you do not, you will have
death. And Moses framed the question in
very stark terms. I set before you life and death.
Choose life, choose life. So I think when we're looking at
challenging situations and divisive situations and
conflicts, including this conflict in the Middle East, a
good way to look at it is to ask who's bringing life and who's
bringing death, Which culture and civilization is bringing and
promoting life? Which culture and civilization
is bringing and promoting death now in the context of an active
war? Both sides are killing, right?
That's how war works. I don't remember.
I've been told I've read it before.
The first person that said war is hell, But war is hell.
There is no war without death and destruction.
Movies that glamorize it and make it look sexy and beautiful
and heroic and wonderful and there are many acts of heroism
that happened during war. But war is hell.
Urban warfare is even worse. It's the worst kind of hell
because you can't engage in urban warfare without cantilling
killing significant numbers of civilians, men, women and
children. And right now death and
destruction are coming from both sides.
So how do we sort out is 1 civilization and one culture
promoting life and one promoting death while both are killing?
But if we look at those cultures and at those civilizations, I
believe you can disagree with me, but I believe one of those
cultures and civilizations is promoting life and the other is
promoting death. Let's just compare.
And this is where I went along with with Chester I.
I got into reading my notes and it took too long.
I'm going to summarize because we don't have time to go through
all of the details, thinks about the things that in our culture
and civilization we know promote life.
Things like the freedom of speech, press, and religion,
allowing differences of opinion to be expressed freely and
openly. Israel has freedom of speech,
press, and religion. You can criticize the government
in Israel. You can do that as a private
citizen. You can demonstrate against the
government. You can do it in the media.
You can do it in social media. You can do it online.
You can do it on television. You can do it in print.
You can. You can criticize the
government. It's built into their
constitution, built into their DNA.
Israel and Hamas, the two other main actors in here, you cannot
criticize. There is no freedom of speech,
press and religion. Speech is controlled.
Protest and dissent against the government is restricted,
forbidden and punished, often by arrest and torture, or at least
arrest and imprisonment if not torture.
Israel is a democratic state. Free elections where where
people and it's an incredibly ethnically diverse country and
and people, whether it's Palestinian citizens or Jewish
citizens or Arab citizens or Christian citizens or Dru
citizens, they all get to vote and they get the same vote and
each one of their votes counts just as much.
Israel and Hamas are authoritarian.
Authoritarian 1's a military dictatorship, the other's a
theocracy. And when there are elections,
those elections are controlled and dominated to ensure a
particular outcome. There is no free participation
in the political process. And in Iran, in Iran, if you're
not part of the right religion and the right political
persuasion, you cannot hold high-ranking positions in the
government. In Israel, did you know there
are Arab members of Israel's governing body, that Knesset,
their equivalent to our Congress?
There are Arab members there. Did you know there is an Arab
person, I believe a Palestinian person on the Supreme Court of
Israel on this? Israel, from its founding, has
attempted to create a culture, a civilization there that allows
for freedom and openness and the expression of many different
viewpoints, many different perspectives.
Arts and the media are incredibly free in Israel, not
in Iran or with Hamas. The treatment of women might be
one of the clearest examples. In Israel, women's rights are
protected. They are equal with men.
They can choose who they marry. They can choose to get divorced.
They can choose what kind of clothes to wear.
And no clothing is forbidden for religious or you know, there's
nothing that's required or forbidden for religious or other
reasons. Women can hold have as much
education as men. They can hold high level
professional jobs like men. They can held high level
government and political jobs. One of the gold of my ear was
their first woman Prime Minister.
And when considered by many, not by everyone, there's, you know,
every group, every political leader, there's their promoters
and detractors was certainly a very powerful and influential
leader in Israel. Women cannot hold high level
positions in Iran or in Hamas. Their freedom and decision
making is limited. In Iran, a woman's testimony in
court is considered legally considered 1/2 as valuable as a
man's testimony. Women are restricted in what
they can wear. They required all women whether
Muslim or not are required to wear the hijab and if a woman
doesn't wear it properly she can be arrested, assaulted, beaten
in prison. Women have restrictions in their
freedom of movement and often have to get permission from
their husband or another male in their in their family for travel
and movement. One of the ways you can see the
difference between life and death in the two countries is,
is and the two cultures is how they wage war.
There is no doubt in Israel's war against Hamas in particular
and, and Hamas is a proxy Iran equips, trains, supports,
supplies, funds Hamas that in their war, particularly with
Hamas, lots of civilians have been killed.
They know that. Do you know the?
I might, I heard this from a credible source.
There was I was listening to a podcast.
I didn't write it down. I might be getting these numbers
wrong. If you want to challenge me on
it and check it if I'm wrong, I will certainly own it.
But I believe I heard this accurately that the
international standard for urban warfare, if you're going to wage
urban warfare, the international standard is that there should be
no more than three civilian deaths for everyone, military
death and urban warfare. So if you if you go into an
urban situation and there are 100 military personnel you're
trying to take out international standard is as you can't kill
more than 300 civilians while trying to take out the 100
military personnel. More than that you're looking at
war crimes. Israel's military urban warfare
against Hamas since 2023 has been a one to one ratio.
They have killed civilians. They have gone out of their way
to limit the number of civilian deaths and achieved a better
ratio than any nation in urban warfare and known history.
They've killed civilians. When Hamas attacked Israel on
August 7th, 2023, they intentionally killed civilians.
They went to the homes of civilians and they murdered men
and women and children. They raped women.
They put babies in ovens and turned the ovens on.
And they went on social media and filmed themselves, and they
celebrated in it, and they rejoiced in it, and they gloried
in it, and they were praised back home for it.
And here's the thing they were doing.
They were just doing what Hamas had said from the very beginning
of Hamas's formation they wanted to do.
Built into Hamas's original charter is the total destruction
of the nation of Israel and the killing of Jews.
Now Iran has built into their constitution the Islamic
Republic of Iran, established in 1979, built in their
constitution the total destruction of the nation of
Israel. It's an explicitly stated goal.
They don't explicitly state anti-Semitism, that we're going
to kill as many Jews as we can. They don't explicitly state
that. Here's an interesting factoid,
right? More than a factoid.
The largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of
Israel is in Iran, 8000 I believe.
Largest community, Jewish community outside of Israel is
in Iran. Their rights and their freedoms
are restricted and limited, but they're there.
Iran doesn't have to, doesn't state it explicitly, but it's
very clear from their support of Hamas and Hezbollah that they're
perfectly OK with that ideology. And some of their leadership has
said off record not acting their official capacities have called
for the death of Jews as well. But one Hamas leader, just as
one example said, and this was in 2024, said all of you
Palestinians living in the rest of the world, 7 million
Palestinians living outside of Palestine, you said there are
Jews all around you. It's your responsibility to kill
as many of them as you can. It's not a direct quote.
Again, if I get into my notes, I'll get lost in the weeds, but
that's the substance of it. There is a a moral, spiritual,
qualitative difference, I believe, between killing
civilians in an effort to defeat a military enemy that has
devoted itself to destroying you, and killing civilians just
to kill civilians to promote your own agenda and your own
politics and your own death seeking ideology.
I think there's a world of difference between those two
things. There have been accusations made
that Israel is committing genocide against the
Palestinians. History simply does not bear
that out. I am.
I'm going to get the numbers on this, so I am going to look this
one up. I got to get to the right spot.
Please be patient. See all of these notes.
This is why I was late getting here today.
Here we go. Palestinian citizens in Israel.
There have been Palestinians. Not not those living in Gaza,
the West Bank, but actual citizens of Israel.
Palestinian citizens in Israel. In 1948, when the modern nation
of Israel was established, there were 156,000 Palestinian
citizens in Israel. In 2024, there were two million
Palestinian citizens living in Israel.
Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank came under Israel's control
in 1967. Israel withdrew from them
completely in 2005. But in 1967 there were 1.4
million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.
In 2024, there was five and a half million.
You cannot claim genocide when a population is growing dramatic
dramatically and when even in warfare, Israel is doing
everything they can to limit civilian casualties.
Israel has been called a colonial nation.
I think that's a misleading statement as best There's no
mother country. You can't leave Israel and go
back to the motherland of the Jewish folks.
Israel is the motherland of the Jewish folks.
Israel is a refugee country where Jewish folks from all over
the world have moved moved to Israel.
More than half of the population in Israel are Jews who are
native to the Middle East. They're not a colonial country.
They're a refugee country providing life and hope to a
group of people who have been persecuted over and over and
over again, discriminated against, shunned, limited and
legal representation and rights and privileges, and out and out
killed and driven out in country after country for the past 2000
years. And Israel, the nation of
Israel, created to give them a safe place as refugees that they
can go. the United States, you might know this already.
Prior to entering World War 2, Jewish refugees coming on boats
to the United States were sent back to Germany.
Our country didn't want Jews here or any more Jews here, so
we sent them back. We didn't enter World War 2 to
save the Jews from the Nazis. It was a happy accident.
It was good that it happened, but that's not why we entered
the war. We entered to collect, protect
political and economic interests.
I've heard this said. I don't know if it's true.
I haven't traced it out, But I challenge you.
I, I don't know. I'm not even sure how you do the
research. I haven't had time to try, but
I've heard it said again from knowledgeable people that every
country in history that have has welcomed and embraced the Jews
that lived among them has prospered during the time that
they welcomed and embraced the Jewish folks living among them.
But that takes us back to that promise God made Abraham.
Through you, all nations of the world will be blessed.
Through you all nations of the world will be blessed.
And we know that the most dramatic fulfillment of that
prophecy is through Jesus Christ himself, who was and is Jewish
and is a blessing to all the peoples of the world so that
that family has been opened up. And we too can become part of
God's chosen people in the family of God through the saving
grace of Jesus Christ. But it also seems to be true
that simply through embracing and receiving the people God
chose to begin with, the Jewish people, that nations are blessed
with prosperity. There is.
I'm not trying to say Israel's perfect any more than I would
say that the United States is perfect.
I'm not saying that that being Jewish is an inoculation against
doing evil things. There are plenty of bad actors
in the world who are Jewish, just like there are plenty of
bad actors in the world who are Christian, plenty of bad actors
who are atheists, plenty of bad actors who are Muslims.
It's not an inoculation, but the culture and the civilization
that Israel is promoting and growing in that region is a
culture and civilization of life.
The culture and civilization of the Islamic Republic and of
Hamas and of Hezbollah is a culture and civilization of
death and destruction. And I believe that we as
followers of Jesus Christ have a responsibility to promote life
and have a responsibility to support life and those cultures
and civilizations that are promoting and supporting life.
One of the ways we can see it's you and I, we don't have any
direct impact on what's happening in the Middle East.
We don't through prayer, through prayer, but as individuals, no
one's calling us and asking our opinions.
And, and sometimes I think, boy, I wish they'd call me and ask my
opinion. I'm glad I don't have Benjamin
Netanyahu's job. I don't know what I would do if
if I had an enemy that was determined and equipped and able
and demonstrated its willingness to kill and destroy my entire
nation and every one of my fellow countrymen.
If I had an enemy that was doing that and they were hiding behind
hospitals and places of worship and and nurseries and preschools
and schools. If they were hiding behind there
saying you can kill us, but you'll have to kill them first,
I don't know what I would do. I'm glad that's not my
responsibility. So one of the things that we can
and we need to do is to approach this situation with humility,
recognizing that that that leaders get placed in very
difficult positions, having to make very difficult decisions.
And no matter what they decide, people will die.
And we can pray for those leaders that they listen to God,
that they choose life when possible.
I think the other thing that we have a responsibility for is to
stand up against scapegoating and bigotry in whatever form
they present themselves, whether it's anti-Semitism or
Islamophobia or racism or sexism, homophobia, any type of
bigotry that looks at a group of people and says, because they're
like that, you know, we can treat them badly.
And then when, when thing bad things are happening around us,
we find ourselves sayings, well, it's those people.
It's those people. They're bringing the wrath of
God on us. They're the ones causing it.
They're the ones that we have a responsibility to stand up
against that because there's nothing of Christ in that.
Nothing. In fact, it's the opposite.
I believe that to be a follower of Jesus Christ gives us the
responsibility to take responsibility.
There's a problem in our community that we don't get to
look for scapegoats and point our fingers at them.
It's our responsibility to bring life into our community.
And when there's death and destruction coming into our
community, it's not. We don't get the privilege to
find scapegoats and point at them and say it's their fault.
Let's just get those people out. It's our responsibility to take
responsibility for bringing life and hope and love and joy and
peace into a situation. And so we can't directly affect
what's happening in the Middle East, but we can stand against
bigotry in our community. We can pray for leaders.
We can take humility and, and, and, and, and exercise humility
when engaging in conversations about the situation.
We can do all of those things. And I believe that is choosing
life over death. I believe that is our
responsibility. I don't.
Again, this is the hardest sermon I've ever had to preach.
I've preached a lot of sermons over a lot of years and a lot of
difficult things. Hardest sermon I've ever had to
preach. And, and, and if I have left you
dissatisfied or, or disgruntled in some way because of this,
please come talk to me about it. I'm, I'm, I'm going to be out of
town this week, but you can message me.
We'll set up a time, we'll get together, have coffee, have a
slice of pizza, foxes, whatever you want to do.
And, and we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it.
But my hope and my prayer is that whatever we're doing, our
motive behind it is to choose life, the life of God, over the
death that our enemy wants to bring upon us.