“Why me?” Have you ever sung that song? The refrain goes something like this: “Why do bad things always happen to me?” I was singing that song one day when a man came up to me and said, “Why not you? Are you special?”
Yep. I am special. And so are you … which is why bad things happen to us sometimes. Sometimes life just happens and there is no particular reason for the bad things that happen to us. Maybe we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe there is no other reason for what happened other than, well … life happens and we happen to get in its way. Sometimes bad things happen because we make bad decisions. But sometimes …
Unless you’ve been living in a cave recently and have no electricity, a TV, a radio, or a cell phone then you know what’s been happening in Afghanistan the last few weeks, amen? We’ve heard a lot about our 20-year involvement in Afghanistan … we’ve heard a lot about how Afghanistan earned the reputation of being the “graveyard of nations.” “Afghanistan is a notoriously difficult country to govern,” explains Afghani journalist Rafiq Tschannen. “Empire after empire, nation after nation have failed to pacify what is today the modern territory of Afghanistan … Afghanistan has had a reputation for destroying ambitious military ventures for centuries. … Starting from Alexander the Great, the region remained deeply problematic for invaders like Genghis Khan, Taimoor and Babar. … The British lost a nasty war in 1842 that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands which compelled them to retreat from Kabul, and the Soviets, after a decade of war in Afghanistan, had to give up in 1989” (Afghanistan: A graveyard of empires? The Muslim Times, October 21, 2020).
While all eyes are on us and all thoughts are on the future of Afghanistan, there is one country that has its eyes and its mind on both the U.S. and Afghanistan … and that’s Israel. According to Israeli Journalist Arie Egozi, “Israeli officials are nervously watching the situation in Afghanistan, with a belief that the collapse of the government … will enable Al-Qaida to renew its efforts to perform terror attacks against both American and Israeli targets around the world” (Israel Braces for Renewed Terrorism Coming from Taliban-Led Afghanistan. Breaking Defense, August 16, 2021.) He goes on to say that the “feeling among the Taliban and Al-Qaida is that after defeating the U.S. in Afghanistan the ‘gate is wide open’ to launch attacks from inside Afghanistan (Ibid.).
The Taliban, which is a Sunni group, and the Shiite government of Iran have had a long history of fighting with each other but one Israeli official warned that “certain Islamic groups in both countries may find common ground in targeting non-Islamic nations” (Ibid.). In other words, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Israeli Journalist Yossi Aloni fears that the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan will not only erode American credibility and deterrence but that Israel may have to “propose a military alliance with the moderate Arab countries, in order to produce an effective front even without the United States” (Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan is a Problem for Israel. Israel Today, August 17, 2021).
Let’s put ourselves in Israel’s place for a moment. Israel is located on the Southwest shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The nation of Israel is tiny … only 9,000 square miles … surrounded by 5 million square miles of countries that “do not recognize its right to exist and openly vow to annihilate it” (Jeremiah, D. Is This the End? Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2015, p. 148).
I’ve been to the Golan heights and it’s an eerie feeling to stand in a bunker and look over at Syria, Iraq, and Jordan and know that there are people over there in bunkers looking down on us and realize that the people of Israel live with this reality every day. One Israeli described what life was like in Israel on his Facebook page: “Everywhere in Israel we can feel the terror tension, by rockets, stones, riots, or Molotov cocktail” (Jeremiah, p. 148). Over 4,000 rockets and mortars were fired at heavily populated areas of Israel last May. Ten Israelis were killed. The number would have been much, much higher if it hadn’t been for Israel’s anti-missile defense system (Rocket & Mortar Attacks By Date – 2001 to Present. Jewishvirtuallibrary.org). Air-raid sirens go off practically every day and it is not uncommon for the people to have to crowd into bomb shelters that are located on just about every block of every city in Israel.
“Why us?” is a centuries old song or lament for the Israelis. For 400 years they sang this song as slaves in Egypt. After establishing a nation in the Promised Land, they were constantly attacked by the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Philistines and many more. In 772 B.C., the Northern Kingdom of Israel was attacked and destroyed by the Assyrians and in 586 B.C., the southern kingdom of Judah was attacked and destroyed by Babylon. They were able to return and rebuild their homeland … and then the Romans came along, conquered them, and then destroyed them. They lived in exile for over 1,800 years … until May 14, 1948, when the holocaust survivors and Jews from around the world cried out “Never again” and re-established the current nation-state of Israel.
During their 1,800-year exile, the Jews were oppressed, denied rights, isolated and forced to live in ghettos, and were persecuted relentlessly. Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich started a brutal campaign of slaughter to try to eliminate them from the face of the earth. Even today, the rallying cry for their enemies is “from the river to the sea” ... a slogan that implicitly calls for “not only dismantling the State of Israel, but cleansing the entire region — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, an area encompassing the West Bank, Gaza, and all of Israel within its internationally recognized pre-1967 borders — of its Jewish population” (Munayyer, Y. What Does “From the River to the Sea” Really Mean? Jewish Currents, June 11, 2021).
It’s no surprise, given what the Jews have gone through and continue to go through today, that they would sing the “Why us?” blues … but what is surprising is the answer to the question, “Why them?
When I was growing up, I got mostly B’s and C’s in school … some A’s … an occasional D or F … and I caught holy … well … let’s just say that my parents gave me some pretty inspirational incentives to get my grades up. My brother, on the hand, well … let’s just say that school wasn’t his thing. Every time he got a B, you’d of thought he was on his way to Harvard or something. They’d praise him to the high heavens. When I pointed out the “discrepancy” to my parents, their explanation was not very satisfying. “We expect more from you.” Yeah.
The same could be said of God’s chosen people. “If we are God’s ‘chosen,’” they would cry, “why are we constantly being attacked and brought to the edge of extinction over and over again?” Through His prophets, God explained that He expected more from them BECAUSE they were His chosen. Because more is expected from the Navy Seals, the Green Beret, and the Army Rangers, they are pushed harder and trained harder than regular soldiers, right? And because they have been tested and tried, they are expected to take on the more dangerous and difficult missions. Makes sense, right? The same with the few, the proud, the Hebrew. As God’s personal, hand-picked chosen people, He expected them to stand tall, to rise to the challenges that confronted them … and their victories over their difficulties and challenges would shine like a victory medal on God’s chest and prove to the world that God had made the right choice.
God knew what they were made up of, but He also knew Who … with a capital “W” … they could count on and part of their “training” was to teach them that they could trust God … that they could depend upon God to come through for them … to help them grow and understand just what it truly means to be chosen by God. Many of their failures were the result of turning to other nations and other gods to carry them through the fray.
Israel’s covenant … Israel’s relationship with God … was unique from the very start. In Genesis 15, God told Abram to sacrifice a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram “cut” the heifer, the goat, the turtledove, and the pigeon in half, laid them on the ground, and chased away the vultures and birds of prey while he waited. “When the sun had gone down and it was dark,” says the Bible, “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:17-18) … the original meaning of “From the River to the Sea”!
The most important feature of this covenant is Who made it and Who ratified it … God Himself! To establish and confirm a covenant in Abram’s day, the two parties would walk between the pieces of the animals that were sacrificed. Walking between the sacrificed carcasses was a way of saying, in effect, “May what has happened to these animals happen to whichever one of us breaks the covenant.” Wow! … a pretty powerful visual incentive to keep the covenant, amen?
What was different here is that only one person passed through the sacrificed carcasses … God! Because this was God’s sovereign covenant with Abram and not an agreement between equals, says one author, the symbols of God … a smoking fire pot and a burning torch … passed between the pieces and Abram did not. “The LORD made the covenant [with Abram] with no conditions … independent of Abram … and He would fulfill it in His time” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 154). There was no conditional clause in the covenant where God said “if you do this … I’ll do that.” There were no provisions made for this covenant to be revoked and it was not subject to amendment or annulment. According to Ancient Near East custom, the act of God passing through the divided carcasses of Abram’s sacrifice alone meant that God invoked a curse upon Himself should He ever break His promise.
Walking through the carcasses of sacrificed animals “ratified” the covenant but it wasn’t the first time that God made His intentions known to Abram. In Genesis 12:1-3, God makes a promise … a covenant … with Abram:
“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. 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 the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Seven times God emphatically declared what He will do for Abram. “I will” show you a land where “I will” make you a great nation … “I will” bless you… “I will” make your name great … “I will” bless those who bless you … “I will” curse those who curse you … and in you, through you, “I will” bless all the families of the earth.
As I’ve pointed out already, this covenant is one that is being made by God for Abram, as well as for his family and his descendants. God uses the personal pronoun “you” eleven times. I will show “YOU” a land where I will make “YOU” a great nation … I will bless “YOU” … I will make “YOUR” name great … I will bless those who bless “YOU” … I will curse those who curse “You” … and in “YOU”, through “YOU”, I will bless all the families of the earth.
God kept up His end of the covenant with Abram. The land that God directed Abram to was, in the words of Moses, a land “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8) … a place where Abram’s flocks and herds increased exponentially and he became extremely wealthy. It was Abram’s home during his lifetime and was then handed down to his descendants just as God had promised. God later changed Abram’s name to “Abraham” and Abraham’s name became, as God promised, great … not only during Abraham’s lifetime but even today, where he is still revered by the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
In verse 2, God promised that he would make Abram and his descendants into a great nation … and Israel has been and continues to be a great nation. Professor Amnon Rubinstein describes what makes Israel a great nation today:
“Minute in size, not much bigger than a sliver of Mediterranean coastline, it has withstood continuing Arab onslaughts, wars, boycotts and terrorism; it has turned itself from a poor, rural country [into] an industrial and post-industrial powerhouse. … It has reduced social, educational and health gaps … between Arabs and Jew. Some of its achievements are unprecedented: Israeli Arabs have a higher life expectancy than European whites. Inside Israel proper, democracy functions even in times of great national emergency. … It has maintained freedom of the press in time of war; it stands out as a singular democratic, First World island in an Arab and Muslim sea of poverty and backwardness” (Peace Won’t Be Instant, but Dreams Can’t Be Dropped.” J Weekly, May 9, 2003).
Here’s something else to think about. The Jews have been conquered and dispersed all over the world and yet they have never sought to settle down and create a country of their own other than where God has led them. Everywhere that they have been forced to live, they have always considered themselves as strangers and aliens, waiting until God “gathers them out of all the countries where I have driven them in My anger, in My fury, and in great wrath; I will bring them back to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely. … Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul” (Jeremiah 32:37, 41).
From the time of the Roman dispersion, the Jews have had no homeland until the modern state of Israel was established in 1948. Not everyone was happy to see the establishment of a new Israel. The Palestinians protested the increasing presence of the Jews in their region and petitioned the United Nations to do something about it … a solution that has led to the many problems that we see going on in that region today. The United Nations partitioned off a large section of what had been Judea and Samaria in Jesus’ day. In 1967, the Jews fought to reclaim the region known as the “West Bank” or the “Gaza Strip.” Although the Jewish state withdrew from the West Bank in 2005, the Jewish settlers are still “a vocal and highly visible minority” who generally live in smaller settlements. “Though they are neighbors and sometimes co-workers,” says one website I visited, “relations between Jews and Palestinians on the West Bank are seldom friendly.” The article went on to say that the “West Bank Palestinians, who are a majority Muslim, see themselves as the area’s indigenous inhabitants; many of their ancestors have lived and farmed in the West Bank for centuries” (Israel’s West Bank Settlements: 4 Questions Answered. The Conversation, November 25, 2019). The Jewish people, however, consider the West Bank part of the homeland that was given to them by God in the Abrahamic covenant and they believe that their presence there will help to bring about the long-awaited coming of the Messiah (Ibid.). As you can no doubt guess, this is a complex and volatile situation and has been for quite some time. For us, as well as for the Jews, the re-establishment of Israel serves as a prominent sign that we are living in the final moments before the coming of Jesus.
Why should we care so much about what happens to Israel? Well, unlike Las Vegas where what happens there stays there, what happens in Israel has ramifications for us and for the world. We have God’s word … God’s promise … on that. “I will bless those who bless you” … referring to Israel … “and the one who curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3). I absolutely believe this. Why wouldn’t I? If God said it, I certainly believe it, don’t you?
Let’s look at the record, shall we? The first nation on record to enslave God’s chosen were the Egyptians. We saw what happened to them, remember? Ten plagues brought the greatest empire in that region of the world at that time to its knees. God wiped out their army … not with soldiers or chariots or spears or swords or arrows but with water. Egypt has never reached such heights of power since. In order to establish themselves as a nation in the land that God had promised them, the Israelis had to go to battle with powerful armies like the Amorites and the Midianites. Anyone here this morning ever meet an Assyrian? Can anyone find “Babylon” on the map? Nope. Sure … the land is still there and they may be called by different names, but like the Egyptians, they’ve never risen to the heights of power that they once had.
The prophet Zechariah repeated this same warning many times, declaring that God would plunder the nations that plunder Israel, “for he who touches [Israel] touches the apple of God’s [eye]” (Zechariah 2:8). At one point, Zechariah called out the nations who had fallen under God’s judgement as a result of their treatment of His people as a warning of what would happen to anyone else who followed their disastrous example. “Behold,” said God, “I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it” (Zechariah 9:2-3).
The empire of Rome … gone. The Third Reich, which was supposed to last for a thousand years? Didn’t last more than 15 years. Communist Russia? Collapsed in 1989. The Jews? Still here! And they are still here despite the attempt in 1967 to eliminate them from the “River to the Sea.” The United Arab Republic, allied with Jordan, Syria, and Palestine waged what is known today as the “Six-Day War” because it only took six days for the small nation of Israel to not only withstand but defeat this massive force arrayed against it. At the start of the battle, Israel was seriously outmanned. “The Arab armies numbered more than 500,000 men; Israel only had 75,000. The Arabs fielded 5,000 tanks and 900 aircraft, whereas the Israeli total was only 1,000 tanks and 175 airplanes” www.sixdaywar.org/content/israel.asp). When the smoke cleared six days later, “the Arab forces had lost almost its entire air force, about 20,000 soldiers, and Israel had taken over significant Arab-controlled territory, including the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and West Bank” (Ibid.). I’d say God was definitely on their side for those six days, wouldn’t you?
When God made His covenant with Abram, He also included us in that covenant: “… in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Beautiful. The purpose of God’s covenant was not to exclude the rest of humanity from His favor but to include the whole world. Abram’s descendants were to become the repository of God’s glory, wisdom, love, and redemptive grace and all of that was to flow from Abram’s descendants to the rest of His people … to us.
And we have been incredibly blessed. The scripture for our lesson this morning came for the Old Testament … which we got from the Jews. “With the possible exception of [the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts] … every book of the Bible was authored by a Jewish writer” (LaHaye, T. & Hindon, E. Target Israel: Caught in the Crosshairs of the End Times. Eugene, OR: Harvest House; 2015; pp. 9-10).
And what is the most important reason that we are eternally grateful for the covenant that God made with Abram? Jesus! Jesus … God’s blessing to all humanity. Jesus … God’s gift of salvation and the means of escaping the grip of sin and death. “All the other promises in God’s covenant with Abraham are in support of this one universal promise that affects every person who has ever lived upon the earth” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 167) … and it is in His holy city of Jerusalem that He will someday return to set up His kingdom on earth … so, yeah, what happens to Israel is of paramount and eternal importance to us, amen?
God made His covenant with Abram in Genesis 12 … He ratified His covenant with Abram in Genesis 15 … He added to it in Genesis 17. By this time, Abram was almost 100 years old. It has been 25 years since his initial encounter with God and doubts were beginning to cloud his mind. God appeared to Abram one last time and reminded him that the covenant that He had made with him was ironclad and eternal.
“I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:1-8; emphasis added).
There are almost 7 million Jews living in Israel today and there are over 14 million Jews world-wide. “Why us?” they ask. Moses explains it this way:
“For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).
And the proof of God’s love and His faithfulness to His covenant is the fact that they are still around despite every effort that’s been made over the centuries and millennia to not only eliminate them from “the River to the Sea” but off the face of the earth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summarized Israel’s long fight for existence and their preservation during a powerful speech that he gave to the United Nations General Assembly on October 1, 2015:
“In every generation, there were those who rose up to destroy our people. In antiquity, we faced destruction from the ancient empires of Babylon and Rome. In the Middle Ages, we faced inquisition and expulsion. And in modern times, we faced pogroms and the Holocaust. Yet the Jewish people persevered. And now another regime has arisen, swearing to destroy Israel. That regime would be wise to consider this: I stand here today representing Israel, a country 67 years young, but the nation-state of a people nearly 4,000 years old. Yet the empires of Babylon and Rome are not represented in this hall of nations. Neither is the Thousand Year Reich. Those seemingly invincible empires are long gone. But Israel lives. The people of Israel live” (Full Transcript of Netanyahu’s Address to UN General Assembly. In Haaretz, October 2, 2015.
I want to remind you that the sanctuary will be open this Friday from 6 to 7 p.m. for prayer time. Last week I asked you to pray for revival … keep that up … also pray for Afghanistan, if you aren’t already … but I would also strongly encourage you to pray for Israel as well.
Please turn to page 12 in the hymnal as we remember how God not only provided bread for His children during their journey in the wilderness to the Promised Land but how He also provided Jesus, Living Bread and Living Water, and His Holy Spirit to sustain us until we reach the eternal promised land of Heaven.
