Psalm 83:1-4
From this verse we can glean several facts about Israel and the Jews that make up this nation:
· God has always heard Israel’s plea as a people. Vs.1
· God has always helped Israel persevere as a people. Vs. 2-3
· God has always heralded Israel’s place as a nation. Vs. 4
As we learned last week, the land of Israel no more belongs to the Muslims than it belongs to me! It belongs to the Jews!!
Race = a group of persons connected by descent or origin. Physical traits, which are genetically transmitted.
Racial prejudice = a hatred of a group of human beings that have traits that cannot change and represents a lesser group of people.
Blacks are hated because of being black, not because of specific black ideas or beliefs that they represent. Where Jews are hated because of a particular way of life.
Anti-Semitism = being against the character or characteristics, especially the ways, ideas or influence.
Fact: This word came into being by a German named Wilheim Marr. He hated Jews and coined the German word “Judenhass” = Jew-hatred.
Key: Jews have always viewed anti-Semitism as hatred to their way of life.
Christians are hated the same way. But if a Christian stops living by the principles that make up Christianity, the persecution stops!
But the big question put before us today is “Why the Jews? Where does it all start?
Genesis 12:2,3
Fact: There are only 14 million Jews in the world today. 4 million of them live in Israel and 200 million Arabs surround them!
Some Perplexing Thoughts About The Jews:
· Between 70 A.D. and 1948, Israel the nation existed while Israel the state did not. For 2000 years they lived in exile from their land.
· The Jews are the only people in the modern world that is both a religion and a nation.
· The Jewish people today are composed of members of every race. It’s a nation defined today more by a religion than by a race.
The Book of Ruth portrays this fact well. Ruth was a pagan who chose to leave her people and religious believes to become a Jew.
· The hatred of the Jews has been humanities greatest and longest hatred.
Some have called it, “The greatest hatred in human history.”
Why The Jews?
1. Reason #1: The High Quality of Jewish Life.
a. Health.
Their dietary laws and sanitary laws kept them healthier than the gentiles. Throughout the O.T. we find that they lived a better life then most pagan societies!
These Laws that God gave them are still in affect to this day!
b. Education.
Education has always been very important to Jewish communities around the world. In over 2000 years of education, Jews have consistently had better education results than any other people.
· American Jews have produced amazing results. It is not surprising that the American grandchildren of Jews such as the woodchoppers of Berdichev-- numbering less than 3% of the American population, have won 27% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American Scientists.
· They are represented more than 231% in medicine in proportion to the general population.
· In Psychiatry, more than 478%.
· In Dentistry, more than 299%
· In Mathematics, more than 238%.
· American Jews are twice as likely than non-Jews to attend collage.
· American Jews have the highest income of any ethnic group in the United States, earning 72% more.
Thomas Sowell, a black economist says, “Even when the Jews lived in slums, they were slums with a difference – lower alcoholism, accidental death rate…Their children had lower truancy rates, lower juvenile delinquency rates (by the 1930’s) higher IQs than other children…Despite voluminous literature claiming that slums shaped people’s values, the Jews had their own values, and they took those values into and out of the slums.”
Christians could learn a thing or two from this philosophy!
2. Reason #2: Jews Are God’s Chosen People.
It’s what many theologians call “Divine Election”.
In 1993 the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations said, “Zionism is a racist creed…absurd ideology.”
The University of California did a 5-year study of anti-Semitism in the U.S.
· The negative beliefs about Jews showed that of 18 beliefs the one with the widest negatives among American non-Jews is that, “Jews still think of themselves as God’s chosen people.
· 59% agreed that, “Jews have too much power in the United States.”
· 3 times as many of those hold that Jews are trying to push in where they are not wanted and twice as many as those who hold that Jews don’t care about anyone but their own kind.
But the scriptures plainly teach that that Jews are God’s chosen people! The list of verses is long, but in…
Micah 3:2 “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.”
Isaiah 49:6
The tribulation period will see this in its fullness!
Chosenness does not mean Jews are more superior to any other people – rather they are a more special people. They were chosen by God to complete a task – to bring a God of holiness and righteousness to the world!
Louis Jacob in his book “A Jewish Theology” says wisely, “…The world owes Israel the idea of the one God of righteousness and holiness. This is how God became known to mankind.”
Key: Just as God sovereignly chose Israel for a divine promise, He also chose them for divine punishment!
3. Reason # 3: The Law Givers.
The 10 Commandments
As the sun is the source of illumination…the moon is the source the reflection…and that’s just what the Jews were for many years by giving us the 10 Commandments!
They were the givers of Moses, the great Lawgiver to all mankind to live by.
The givers of the Messiah the ultimate Judge and Savior of the world! But humanism says…wait a minute, man is the judge of things on this planet!
A popular song of the Hitler Youth was, “Popes and Rabbis shall be no more. No more creeping to church. We do not need any Christian or Jewish virtues. Our leader Adolf Hitler is our Savior.”
4. Reason #4: Jews Were Known As “The Christ Killers”.
For 1500 years, Christians and non-Christians have called Jews “Christ-killers”.
By the 4th century, the Christianity was the dominant religion in the world. By 600 A.D. the Roman Catholic Church became the dominant religious force and they also became Jew haters!
They started the false idea that the Jews were tortures of Christ and that their heavenly father was the Devil!
A major reason that help spur this concept:
· The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation of the 13th century.
This bad theology teaches that during Communion the bread and wine literally turns into the body and blood of Jesus all over again.
Since Jews were the so-called tortures of Messiah, communion reinforced this.
5. Reason #5: Jews Across Europe Refused to Convert or be baptized Into Christianity.
In some countries thousands of Jews would be put to death for this refusal to become Christians. So they were seen as children of the Devil.
It was 1389 in Praque, the Jewish community was rounded up by a mob of Christians and they offered the Jews baptism or death. Over 3000 Jews were murdered.
In Berlin, the year 1510, over 2600 Jews would not be baptized so they were beheaded and then burned. These kinds of events went on until about the 1800’s.
In Martin Luther’s pamphlet “The Jews and Their Lies”, published in Wittenberg, 1543, he wrote, “First their synagogues should be set on fire and whatever is left be buried in the dirt so that no one may be able to see a stone or cinder from it...Jewish prayer books should be destroyed...then the Jewish people should be dealt with, their homes smashed and destroyed. Jews should be banned from the roads and markets, should be drafted into forced labor and made to earn their bread ‘by the sweat of their noses…They live by evil and plunder; they are wicked beasts that ought to be driven out like mad dogs…In the last resort they should be kicked out for all time.”
6. Reason #6: The Jews Were Hitler’s Scapegoat.
There are many reasons why Hitler hated the Jews, but the one that seems to stand out the most is the blame game! Just before WW2, Germany was broken nationally and busted economically.
Many historians say that Hitler had to blame much of the problems in Germany on the Jews! So it could be said that Hitler gained large amounts of power by attacking the Jews! By doing this he gain enormous power in a short time.
Lucy Dawidowitz in her book “The War Against The Jews” wrote, “Serious people, responsible people, thought that Hitler’s notion about the Jews were, at best, merely political bait for disgruntled masses, no more than ideological window dressing to cloak a naked drive for power…Jews were the dominate passion behind the drive for power.”
On April 29, 1945, Hitler’s last words to the German people were, “Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to the merciless opposition to the universal prisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.”
I return to Martin Luther for a moment. His hatred for the Jews towards the end of his life was so strong that the Nazi’s actually used his writing to justify their hatred for the Jews.
Hitler was quite familiar with Luther’s writings and seemed to admire him.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler calls Luther one of the great leaders of Germany. In a conversation that Hitler records in his book takes place in 1918. He said: “Luther was a great man, a giant. With one blow he heralded the new dawn…He saw the Jew, as we are only beginning to see them today.”
Side note: Today this same book is a best seller with Arabs in Palestine and Saudi Arabia!
By the way… Hitler’s first large scale attack on the Jews that destroyed almost all of Germany’s synagogues and murdered countless Jews in the process, He announced that the attack was in honor of Marin Luther’s birthday!
At the end of the war, during the Nuremberg Trials, Julius Streicher argued in his defense that he never said anything about the Jews that Martin Luther had not said 400 years earlier!
Some Disturbing Comparison:
Under The Christian Banner
Jews & Christians could not eat together,
Synod of Elvira, 306 A.D.
Jews were not allowed to hold public office,
Synod of Clermont, 535 A.D.
Jews were not allowed in public during Passion Week,
Third Synod of Orleans, 538 A.D.
The burning of the Talmud and another Jewish books,
Synod of Toledo, 681 A.D.
The marking of Jewish clothing with a badge to identify them,
4th Lateran Council
Under The German Banner
Jews barred from eating with Germans,
December 30, 1939
Jews banned from civil service,
April 7, 1933
Decree authorizes Jews from the streets on certain holidays, December 3, 1938
The Nazis started burning Jewish book in the streets,
1939
Decree that said Jews must wear a yellow star on clothes, September 1, 1941
7. Reason# 7: This Hatred For The Jews Is Connected To Satan.
Revelation 12:1-6
John has a flashback to the beginning of a spiritual hatred of the Jews!
a. The Woman = Israel
b. Clothed with the sun = The Jewish glory and dignity. Israel’s exalted status with promise!
c. Moon under her feet = Authority of some sort.
d. 12 stars = the 12 tribes of Israel
e. Great fiery, red dragon = Israel’s arch enemy – Satan
f. 7 heads = past world kingdoms
g. 10 horns = future kingdoms of Daniel ch.7
h. A third of the stars = the number of angels that rebelled with Satan
i. Devour her child = Satan’s attempt to stop the Jewish virgin birth of Jesus Christ - God in the flesh!
Herod tried to kill all the male children in order to stop a heavenly king from an earthly kingdom some day during the Millennium!
Vs. 5
Isaiah 9: 6-7
But before the King of kings can rule with a rod of iron in His hand, first, this Jewish carpenter had to suffer with nails of iron in his hand!
Isaiah 53
