2013-04-05
Good Morning Dear Ones,
We left off last week with an explanation for why Israel’s demise will never happen. This is closely tied with God’s will, which is never ultimately thwarted. IS 54: 17, “’No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from Me,’ says the Lord.” Other nations that have been Israel’s enemies no longer exist-Amalekites, Ammorites, Edomites, Moabites, Canaanites, Selucids, supporters of the Spanish inquisition under Torquemada, the Nazis, and so on. Yet, through 3000 years of unparalleled persecution, Israel remains. Will the Iranis and other Arab states destroy her? Only God knows for sure, but I would bet not. These verses bear repeating: PS 105: 7-11, 14-15, 24, 42. “He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the word He commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant He made with Abraham, the oath He swore to Isaac . He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, in Israel as an everlasting covenant: ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit’…He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake He rebuked kings: ‘Do not touch My anointed ones; do My prophets no harm’…The Lord made His people very fruitful; He made them too numerous for their foes…For He remembered His holy promise given to His servant Abraham.”
It’s my hope that these Scriptures have been convincing that our God keeps His promises and gives us consistent teaching [PS 138: 8; HE 13: 8]. Each of us when amidst our trials asks: Does the Lord really love us? There is a plea that believing Israelis and we can utter-PS 17: 8, “Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings.” Our eyes are some of the most vulnerable parts of our bodies. The “apple” of one’s eye is the pupil, the very center of our vision. We can ask the Lord to love us as He does His own eyesight, and we can be assured of that intensity of His love, because of His grace. Grace is undeserved merit, so we don’t deserve it and can’t earn it through our works. EPH 2: 8-10 really clarifies this for us. “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith –and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Now that we are assured of God love and care for us [see also 1 PET 5: 7], let’s look at His attitude toward Israel. JER 2: 3, “Israel, you belonged to Me alone; you were My sacred possession. I sent suffering and disaster on everyone who hurt you. I, the Lord, have spoken.” This is powerful, straight to the point!
The question arises: What about the pogroms [movements against Jews by their enemies like the Warsaw Ghetto of WW II] and the Holocaust [the murder of 6, 000,000 Jews and their Gentile supporters in the Nazi concentration campus between 1938 and 1945 all over Europe]? “Where was God then? Who was their protector?” some ask. And it’s only fair that these questions be tackled. My only honest attempt must be in terms of the bigger picture, not just what happened during those years. God sees things with greater perspective that any human can ever have. IS 55: 8-9, “’For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.’” We begin an ascend toward God’s perspective in considering what finally happened on May 14, 1948 with the consummation of the many Biblical prophecies about the restoration of Israel’s nationhood. Even higher than that, we must consider the end times as Daniel does. DN 12: 1, “At that time [the Archangel] Michael [Israel’s guardian angel], the great prince who protects your people will arise. There will a time of distress as has not happened until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book [God’s Book of Life]—will be delivered.” It is rather amazing how many of these questions are answered in the Scriptures. How can we ignore the fate of the martyrs we are told about in REV 6: 9-11? “When He opened the fifth seal, I [John] saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain, because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until You judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe [the symbol of righteousness], and they were told to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.” Our Strong Tower hasn’t forgotten those innocents who were killed for their beliefs or in the rampages of raving lunatics, like God’s children of places like Columbine High School, the theater in Aurora, CO, or Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. I believe He accounts for each one of His human creation [PS 33: 13].
PRAYER: O Lord, our hearts are broken and bleed for those who must physically die in such suffering. It is difficult in times like these to project upward toward Your superior perspective. We find it so hard to understand why You must allow such things to happen to some of Your human covenant partners. So, since You have superior omniscience [PS 147: 5], we bow before You in reverence and ask You to help us understand. So many of these matters raised here are matters of faith, “Being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see,” as we learn in HE 11: 1. Perhaps the hardest things You ask us to do are the ones like these that rely on us having faith. And yet, that is what we must do until that Day when our many questions get answered. We pray that like David and Jonathan, our names appear in Your Book of Life, and that we are judged by Your Son, the only One with proper authority [DN 7: 13-14], as innocent and glorified in heaven. We pray, Dearest Abba, that there aren’t many more innocents who must be martyred and placed under Your heavenly throne. It is true that life on earth is getting more and more difficult for believers, and that rejecters of the truth are becoming more and more evil. We must take comfort in knowing Your righteous use of Your power can even stop the judgments so that innocents can be protected, as You reveal to us in REV 7: 3, 17 and 8: 1. Your love for us is unparalleled, and we are grateful. PS 107: 1-3, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say this—‘those He redeemed from the hand of foe; those He gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.’” And as for Israel, we can take comfort from PS 147: 2-3, “The Lord builds upJerusalem; He gathers the exiles ofIsrael. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” You are a good and kind God, One Who takes care of those who commit themselves to Him and enter into a covenant relationship with Him. We offer You praise and thanks, our loyalty and our love in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: There is still more to say in response to our Strong Tower’s utterance, “Do not touch My anointed ones; do My prophets no harm.” Up to now, I haven’t dealt with Israel’s disobedience to God, and that must be accomplished. In the meanwhile, we need to look at the solutions possible for this problem, a veritable wish-list of what we need to pray God’s human creation will do. Our own willingness to look at our lives, continue learning from the past, and searching out our leftover sinfulness in cooperation with God’s efforts to perfect us can make a difference for good. We must put aside guilt, be honest with ourselves (and others), and refuse to deviate from God’s teaching. For me, this means spending daily time with the Scriptures, asking for God’s help in prayer, and having the courage to take His advice- even when it puts me outside my comfort zone. All of us would like everyone to love us, but that isn’t possible. There are a host of reasons for this, most of them connected to sinfulness on either our part or the other person’s, or both. We can’t be self-righteous about our faith in the Lord either. We must continue to avoid the adversary’s temptations and let the Lord be in charge of every facet of our earthly lives. Easy to say; not easy to do. And yet, God has created us to be able to do this, and He is always here with us to guide us. I pray that each of us remains teachable in the sense expressed in IS 50: 4, “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.” Our Lord loves us with an everlasting love, and He deserves nothing less from us that our utter reverence. Praise and thanks be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2012-2013. All Rights Reserved.
<-- Back to Archives