For the past few days I have been glued to the television watching the terrible events unfold in and around Israel. As we see the millenia-old conflict fanned back into flame once again, It's important for us to understand not only why this is happening, but also how we as folowers of Christ should respond.
How are we to understand all of this that is happening in the world today? How did it begin? Where did it come from? Will it ever end? How should we live our lives as followers of Christ in the midst of such a frightening, dangerous world? What lessons can we learn in our own lives as we attempt to understand how all of this terror began? I need to begin here by just making several introductory statements. First, what we see happening in the world today is indisputably clear evidence of the evil that is in the world today and that evil is personified in and inspired by a real, living being called Satan. We need to remind ourselves of the words of John 10:10 where Satan is portrayed as a thief with one objective - to steal, kill, and destroy. To answer the question of where all of this terror and hatred comes from, we have to acknowledge that though it comes through the hands of evil men, Satan is the inspiration and power behind it.
Secondly, we need to understand that God has placed before every human being two paths of life to follow. In the Garden of Eden there were two significant trees - the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; humanity had a choice. The people of Israel were told to choose which God they would serve, Jehovah or Baal (who really was no god at all, merely an idol). Jeremiah cried out to his countrymen who were rejecting God and said, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it.” God declared to Israel that He was setting before them blessing and cursing and they were to choose between the two. Jesus called these two paths a broad road and wide gate, and a narrow road and small gate. Every day, each of us in this room is faced with the choice of which path to follow. There is a path that leads to life and blessing, and there is a path that leads to death and destruction. The choices we make, both big and small determine which path we will follow. Each decision we make sets us on a particular path.
Next we need to see that each choice, therefore each path, brings consequences. Adam & Eve chose the wrong tree and brought death and separation from God to the entire world. Jeremiah’s call to ask for the good path and walk in it was followed by the warning that following the good path would bring rest to our souls, but refusing the good path would bring disaster. Jesus said that the broad road and wide gate brings destruction, but the narrow road and small gate leads to life; full and abundant life. Listen to the words of Isaiah 1:19-20 as this prophet speaks to his people about the choice before them: “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.”
Now I’ve made these observations with you to help us better understand why we have the terrorism, fighting, and war - primarily between Arabs & Jews - here in the 21st century. You see, everything we see in our news today concerning this can all be traced back to a seemingly small decision, made by a few people, several thousand years ago. We’ll begin with a man named Abram. We don’t have time here to go into his story in great depth, but we’ll look at some high points. One day God spoke to Abram and told him to pack up and leave his home country. He didn’t know where he was going, he was to just pack up and start walking, and God would let him know when he got to the right spot. When he arrived, God said this is it, I’m giving this land to you and all of your descendants. One problem. Abram and his wife were very old, and had no children. They were past child-bearing age. Yet God assured Abram that he would indeed have a children and would be the father of many nations.
At one point, God actually appeared to Abraham and cut a covenant with him in a very dramatic way; during which God spoke in great detail about the descendants that would come from Abraham. Here was God’s plan, a plan that Abraham and his wife were unable to see because they were too blinded by their circumstances: The plan was that God would supernaturally cause Sarah to conceive, carry, and give birth to a son even in her old age, who would then bring forth all of the descendants God had promised. Not believing that this could actually happen, Abraham and Sarah devised their own plan; after all, God does need our help once-in-a-while, doesn’t He? Sarah said to him, “Abe, face it, I’m way too old to do this childbirth thing, it ain’t happening. Check out our maid, Hagar. She’s kind of cute, isn’t she? Tell you what. So you can have a child, I’ll turn my head while you go get her pregnant. God said He wanted you to have a child, this seems like the only way for it to happen. So go for it.”
Stand in the crossroads and look. With Sarah's words, Abraham had to choose a path. At that moment he had to decide, “Am I going to trust God to do this His way? Or am I going to take matters into my own hands and make it happen myself?” He chose to do it his own way. He slept with Hagar, she became pregnant, and eventually gave birth to a son who was named Ishmael. As Hagar was carrying the baby, an angel of the Lord appeared to her and gave her a glimpse into the future, at what her son would be like. In Genesis 16:11, 12 the Bible says, “The angel of the LORD also said to her: "You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers."
Even though Abraham did take matters into his own hands and set into motion a plan that God never intended, God’s ultimate plan will never be thwarted by mere humans. God finally did miraculously cause Sarah to conceive, carry, and give birth to the child God had promised; a child they named Isaac. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, the entire Jewish race, and ultimately Jesus Christ who came to save the entire world from sin. God’s plan was carried out. But the choice of Abraham, the path he chose at that one pivotal moment in his life, has brought terrible consequences down through the centuries to today.
From the moment of Ishmael’s conception there was born a spirit of bitterness, competition, and rivalry, first between Hagar and Sarah, and later between the two boys. Isaac, the child of promise is the father of the Jewish people and a forefather of our Christian faith. In the same way we look to Isaac, the Arab people and the Islamic religion look to Ishmael. Ishmael is considered a patriarch of both the Arab people and the Muslim religion. In fact, Mohammad himself, the founding "prophet" of Islam considers himself to be a true descendant of Ishmael.
God’s look into the future was correct, as always. Through the centuries, Ishmael’s descendants have raised their hands in war against everyone around them, and everyone around them has responded with equal hostility. The Palestinian sons of Ishmael, and the Jewish sons of Isaac have been fighting for the same piece of land since the beginning. And nearly the entire world has gotten into the fight. The United States and many other western nations, because we have blessed and supported Israel through the years have now become targets of Ishmael. The constant fighting in the Middle East is a consequence of Abraham’s decision. Osama Bin Laden’s hatred of America is a consequence of Abraham’s decision. September 11 was a consequence of Abraham’s decision. The killing of Christians in Arab nations is a consequence of Abraham’s decision. The war erupting today is a consequence of Abraham's decision.
This is how we have gotten to where we are today. But will it ever end? It will end one day. We have that promise from Isaiah chapter 2:1-4. So yes, there is an end in sight, but it will not come until Jesus Christ returns to earth and establishes his kingdom here. The end of fighting, war, terrorism, the on-going battle between Isaac and Ishmael is a long way off. It will continue until Christ returns. But when he does return there will peace like the world has never seen. He will bring perfect peace, unending peace when he comes to make everything new.
So how do we live in the meantime? This world is a frightening place. My parents have recently begun doing a lot of traveling and I have to admit that every time they take another trip I think about them being in an airplane and there is a small ripple of worry that goes through me. I remember back in late 2001 when Lynn and I had to get on a plane and fly not long after 911. I admit to you that I was looking very closely at the people who were on that plane with me. There were a couple middle-eastern men on that particular flight and to be honest, I was a little nervous. I watched them more than I watched any other passengers.
But let me suggest to you that our first response to the terror around us should be a response of peace. If we are followers of Christ, children of God, we really have nothing to fear. We know first that nothing is going to happen to us that is not first permitted by our Father in Heaven. One of my favorite psalms in Psalm 91, which I referenced in my post Vulunerability. As a follower of Christ you are God’s beloved child who can awake each morning with the assurance that God is with you, watching over you, protecting you, keeping you safe.
But what about Christians who ARE tortured and killed by terrorists. It happens...all the time. Yes it does. And to make sense of our protection by God in light of this we have to believe the word of God when it describes the pain and suffering that we may endure here as “light and momentary troubles that are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all.” We have to trust and believe the Word of God that assures us that when we are absent from the body we are immediately present with the Lord in paradise. That the death of this body is nothing more than a release from captivity into the presence of God where he has prepared for us eternal pleasures. As children of God we must believe that when death comes, through whatever means it comes, that moment of death was appointed and ordained by God and God himself considers the physical death of those who are His to be a beautiful, precious thing, because it is a magnificent release from this decaying body and world into His eternal Kingdom where suffering and death do not exist.
There’s another response that we as citizens of the Kingdom of God need to consider, and that is our response to the people who are the descendants of Ishmael. On the morning of September 12, 2001 America was a nation filled with rage. On that day there was perhaps more hatred for Ishmael’s descendants than at any other time in our history. I was working for a newspaper at that time. I remember looking at newspaper headlines from across the country on the morning of Sept. 12. One particular headline was simply one word in large bold print followed by an exclamation point. Bastards! We were filled with hate, and believed that we had a right to be. I want to remind you this morning though, that God does not hate the descendants of Ishmael.
If we look closely at the story of Ishmael in scripture, we see a God who is as loving and compassionate toward Ishmael as He is toward Isaac. At one point in the story, Abram sends Hagar and Ishmael away. He kicks them out of his house forever, sending this woman and her young boy out alone into the wilderness. Before sending them away, God spoke to Abraham and assured him that he would watch over Ishmael, and would make him into a nation as well. While in the wilderness, the water had run out for Hagar & Ishmael and she left him to die and sat off in the distance so she wouldn’t watch him die. But again, God spoke, this time to Hagar and assured her that He heard the boys cry and would take care of them. He then led them to a well of water. Ishmael’s name itself means, “God hears.”
In his book, Healing the Broken Family of Abraham, Don McCurry writes, "Just as He will hear any individual who honestly desires to know God, know His truth (the truth that makes us free), and finds that truth in Jesus Christ who said of himself that he was the way, the truth, and the life, God will hear the cries of the Arab and the Muslim."
I want to conclude by suggesting one last response. As children of God, believers of the Word of God, we have the responsibility to hear with both our mind and our heart what God has said to us, and then allow it to shape our life. There is a moral to the story of Abraham that we can’t afford to miss, for missing this moral can bring incredible darkness and despair into our lives. The moral of the story is that God has set before us two paths. He has promised to show us the path that will lead to life. That path is a path of believing what He has said, obeying what he has said, and trusting him to do in our lives what he said he will do, regardless of how the circumstances appear. It is a path in which we recognize that his ways are far above our ways, often beyond understanding. How in the world can a 90 year old woman conceive and birth a child? It is a path which we walk by faith, not by sight, simply trusting the one who claims to be the way. It’s a path in which we refuse to do things our own way, thinking that we can do a better job of it than God. It’s a path that leads to blessing, freedom, joy, peace, and life.
The alternative to this is a self-centered, self-directed path of self-reliance where God has been pushed into the shadows as nothing more than a safety net in case we get into trouble. As you will see when you turn on the news tonight or read tomorrow’s headlines, choosing this path can and will bring about terrible consequences that will reach far beyond ourselves, impacting people in ways and places that we never imagined.
Many times tomorrow you will find yourselves in the crossroads. You will be given a choice. You will know what God has said to do; how God’s Word says you should respond. You will also know what feels most natural to you, what seems to make more sense. God’s Word will tell you to forgive that person, but it makes more sense to let them know you’re angry and then hold a grudge. God’s Word will tell you to love, but it might feel better to hate. God’s Word will tell you to work hard and be honest, but it may make more sense to take the easy way out by cheating. God’s Word will tell you to keep yourself pure, but it may make more sense to enjoy the pleasure of the moment. When you find yourself in the crossroad, stand still. Ask God to show you the good path. And then walk in that path.
Israel
Lebanon
I've been thinking a lot lately about how radical Islam will play into the end-times as spoken about in scripture. Today the Associated Press published this article in which we are once again reminded of the Muslim intent. This story confirms their desire to not only overthrow the west and rule the world, but to also destroy Christianity. 
Al Qaeda’s twenty-year plan began on September 11th, with a stage that Hussein calls “The Awakening.” The ideologues within Al Qaeda believed that “the Islamic nation was in a state of hibernation,” because of repeated catastrophes inflicted upon Muslims by the West. By striking America—“the head of the serpent”—Al Qaeda caused the United States to “lose consciousness and act chaotically against those who attacked it. This entitled the party that hit the serpent to lead the Islamic nation.” This first stage, says Hussein, ended in 2003, when American troops entered Baghdad.
It's dangerous to begin prognosticating on how the end times will unfold. Each of the past 20 centuries is riddled with stories of people who claimed to know how and when the end would come, only to be ridiculed when it didn't come to pass as they had predicted.
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