Why The Jews? Pt. 1

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…