HAMAS

 You won't be surprised to learn that the Hebrew word, "hamas," means "violence." The name is well-chosen. The world is seeing violence on steroids in Hamas' attack on Israel, an attack that continues to the point one commentator, an American Jew, has described it as, "The worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust." 

Hamas is raging through Israel, killing, kidnapping, and burning Jewish houses with fathers, mothers, and children trapped inside, burning to death. And in the horror of indescribable horrors, murdering 100 babies, some by beheading. Can anyone imagine the depth of savage depravity it would take to do that? The Satan-inspired hatred of the Jews in the Middle East and around the world knows no bounds. The mask is off. 

But there's one thing Hamas doesn't know, one thing the elites of our nation and the elites of nations around the world do not know. That ignorance is a willful one. What they willfully refuse to recognize is that what Hamas and those countries helping them financially have done is to attack the "pupil" (literal translation) of God's eye. In this anthropomorphism, the author uses the most sensitive part of the human eye to describe God's regard for Israel. 

And thereby hangs a tale which comes to us from the shortest book, an ignored book, in the Old Testament, written by a prophet named Obadiah. It's a book devoted to warning one Gentile nation and therefore all Gentile nations of which America is one. Obadiah wrote a book about Edom, the nation descended from Esau the twin brother of Jacob. 

Edom had an infection, the Hamas Syndrome--a abiding and fierce hatred of Israel.That hatred was their attitude but the attitude turned into action. Because of that, God issued a stern warning to Edom and, by application, to all Gentile nations who would dare to touch the pupil of His eye. 

Obadiah begins God's warning by shining the divine spotlight on Edom's arrogant attitude: Edom thought herself to be untouchable because of its geography, which, in their way of misguided thinking, i. e. human viewpoint, made it impossible for any nation to come against her. Their geography made them indestructible, a veritable fortress.The arrogant Edomite was Icarus flying high. 

The Edomite believed that because of his position, there was no chink in their geographical armor. But God is the Creator of geography. It is finger work for Him to make a major chink in such puny armor. 

Obadiah relates God's graphic decree issued because of Edom's opposition to Israel: "I will bring you down." "I will ruin you." I will ransack your wealth." "I will destroy your wisest men." "I will destroy your military." "I will slaughter you." And last but not least, "I will destroy you forever." In more graphic terms, "I will wipe you off the face of the earth."

The question the reader his is, "Why? What have they done?"

The answer is a fourfold one:

1. When Israel was invaded by her enemies, Edom did nothing; she stood aloof.

2. When Israel was attacked and looted, Edom gloated, rejoicing to  see it.

3. Edom then took an active participation in the sacking of Jerusalem.

4. Edom set up roadblocks to stop and kill the Jews who were trying to escape the destruction.

Obadiah is telling the Edomites, what goes around come around, only worse. 

Isaiah is equally graphic as he cites God's coming in judgment against those who strike at the pupil of His eye. Isaiah paints a word picture: God's sword will be filled with blood."(Is. 34) 

Isaiah has a word of advice to the leaders of the Gentile nations: "Seek the book of the Lord and read it." It's in Isaiah's book (and Obadiah's) that the Gentile nations can learn what happens when they attack the pupil. 

These warnings are serious ones for America as we contemplate our nation's role in empowering Iran to finance Hamas. It is scary indeed as we see rallies on the prestigious campuses of our educational institutions chanting their support of the savagery of Hamas; it is unbelievable as we hear some our elites in government refusing to condemn the barbaric behavior of Hamas against Israel, therefore "standing aloof" as Obadiah said of Edom; then there are those gloating over atrocities too horrible to even think about. 

Campuses, showing surfacing of the intellectual and spiritual rot that has  been their cancer for a long time, erupting in antisemitism is Edom writ large, a harbinger of the coming discipline cominig to American shores.

And by the way, what happened to Edom? Has anyone ever met or even heard of an Edomite living today? 

JFK, BERNIE SANDERS, AND A MAN NAMED VOUGHT

 Back the day, 1960 to be exact, John F. Kennedy was running for the office of President. Back in the day, he had a problem; he was a Roman Catholic and no Roman Catholic had ever won the presidency. The opposition to a Catholic president was mainly coming from the southern states and one of the strategies of his campaign was to select Lyndon Johnson as his running mate in the hope that such a choice would bring the Lone State's electoral college votes into the Democrat column. Johnson was in a powerful position at the time as the majority leader of the U. S. Senate, a position far more powerful than that  the of the Vice President. 

Johnson, with a sense of the macabre, asked his staff to check on the number of vice presidents who had become presidents due to the death of the president. They did. Johnson then decided that the odds were fairly good, so he accepted the offer.(Was he prescient or what!)

During the campaign, JFK, to combat the anti-Catholic sentiment in what was then the "Solid South," arranged a meeting in which he would address a conference of Protestant pastors to confront the issue. But he did more than that. He pointed out that, according to the Constitution, there is to be no religious test for office. To wit:

"Article VI specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This prohibition banned a longstanding form of religious discrimination practiced both in England and in the United States. It provided an enduring constitutional commitment to religious liberty and equality that has influenced the way Americans have understood the relationship between government and religion over the last two centuries.

"In England, religious tests were used to “establish” the Church of England as an official national church. The Test Acts required all government officials to take an oath disclaiming the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and affirming the Church of England’s teachings about receiving the sacrament. These laws effectively excluded Catholics and members of dissenting Protestant sects from exercising political power. Religious tests were needed, William Blackstone explained, to protect the established church and the government “against perils from non-conformists of all denominations, infidels, turks, jews, heretics, papists, and sectaries.”

"At the time the United States Constitution was adopted, religious qualifications for holding office also were pervasive throughout the states. Delaware’s constitution required government officials to 'profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.' 

"North Carolina barred anyone 'who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion' from serving in the government. Unlike the rule in England, however, American religious tests did not limit office-holding to members of a particular established church. Every state allowed Protestants of all varieties to serve in government. Still, religious tests were designed to exclude certain people—often Catholics or non-Christians—from holding office based on their faith."

Kennedy also stressed during the campaign that nobody bothered to ask him his religion beforehe  fought in WW II.  

That was then, this is now.

Enter stage left the current Democrat Senator from the Green Mountain State whose state motto is, "Freedom and Unity," Bernie Sanders. (I would suggest, "We make pancakes tolerable" but that's another story.) And at his entrance, we see that Senator Sanders is angry, nay, enraged because of the man seated before him, a man named Vought. 

Mr. Vaught is there before Bernie Sanders and a panel of other senators because Mr. Vaught is seeking to be confirmed to some type of office few people have ever heard of. The senator is enraged at Mr. Vaught because his staff has uncovered some "dirt" on the office seeker. Bernie Sanders is in possession of what the the staff has discovered and he is horrified. It's in the form of a sentence Mr. Vought wrote.

Does the quote have anything to do with recommending child molestation? Was it a posting commending Timothy McVeigh? Or did Vought write something scandalous on a statue of Martin Luther King when he was in college? The answer is "None of the above."

Sanders was livid because he had discovered that Mr. Vaught, on January 17, 2016, had written an opinion piece for a publication called The Resurgent in which he said, "Muslims have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned."

Senator Sanders hammered away at Mr. Vought and then summed up his indignation to the chairman of the committee, saying, "Mr. Chairman, in my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible, it is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world." (One might wonder if the Senator might be upset at the Koran's instruction to "Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal sternly with them. Hell shall be their home, evil their fate.” (Sura 66:9)

How did the confirmation go? Sanders closed by saying the nominee was "Really not someone who this country is supposed to be about. I will vote no." (Vought was eventually confirmed by a 50-49 vote nonetheless.)

The ecclesiastical system of which JFK was a member holds to this tenet: "Chrsit himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it." The tenet of Islam states: " "And whoever seeks a religion other than Islaam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers." [Aal ‘Imraan 3:85]

 And "There is no-one, Jew or Christian, who hears of me then dies without believing in that with which I have been sent, but he will be one of the people of Hell." .

Vought simply stated a core belief of the Christian faith which was somehow by some strange twist of logic, used to declare that he hated Muslims. He was expressing his beliefs about the theology of Islam, that it was deficient and stating the result of that deficiency and that was used as a religious test for office by the 48 other senators who voted "No" So, who endures the unconstitutional test of religion? The Christian.

One chapter and verse come to mind: "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you." (John 15:18)

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THE SIN THAT WILL BRING AMERICA DOWN

 There is one sin that will bring about the fall of America. Guaranteed. It seems to be occurring, right now, today.

Some may think that sin is the murder of over 63 million innocents since 1973, by the violence of abortion Others may think that it's America's rebellion against God's design for marriage, the in-your-face-sign of which was the recent flying of the so-called Pride Flag taking center stage over the American flag in June 2023, at the White House which included a celebration of the rebellion. Flying that flag was a signal that the movement has conquered the nation. That's what a conquering army does, it takes down the flag of the conquered and hoists their flag.

But, as evil as those sins are, they aren't the one sin which guarantees our destruction. The sin is named in the shortest book in the Old Testament one that details that one heinous sin and it does so in three sections. So, let's go there, to the tiny book of Obadiah, listen, and learn.

The prophet gives four reasons for the fall of the nation of Edom whom God says He will "make small among the nations" because of that one sin:

1. Edom made treaties with those who wanted to destroy Israel.

2. Edom commuted acts of violence against Israel.

3. Edom gloated over the defeat of Israel as it stood with its allies who came against Jerusalem.

4. Edom was inhumane to those Jews who fled the destruction of Jerusalem,"cutting them down" or "imprisoning" them.  

That's it. That's the one sin that will "make America small among the nations:" to side with those who come against the apple of God's eye, Israel.  We call it antisemitism. 

A CONDESCENDING CLERGYMAN

 He stands behind the pulpit at the ready to make his dramatic, sarcastic, and condescending statement to the flock. He, dressed as if he's ready to mow the lawn,  begins, "You can't walk up to someone on the street and say (at this point, he puts on a mocking, false, high pitched voice) "Jesus loves you and God loves you."

He goes on to declare, "Paul never said (putting on the false, mocking voice again) "Hey, guys, Jesus loves you!" He doesn't stop there: "I challenge you to find that statement anywhere in the book of Acts that the apostles said, "Jesus loves you." 

That's true but you can't find that any apostle walked up to someone on the street and said, "Hey, it's a sin  to have an abortion." 

His sermon is a belief of many Calvinists, the idea that God's love isn't for everyone. During a question and answer period, a woman asked R. C. Sproul that very question, "Is God's love for everyone?" His answer was, "No." 

However, what do we find in the book of Acts? We find Acts 17:1-4: "Now when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. ² And according to Paul’s custom, he ^[a]visited them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, ^3 [b]explaining and ^[c]giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.” ⁴ And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a significant number of the leading women."

Is suffering and dying not an evidence of love? Or, what about these statements in John 10:11; 15:13; I John 3:16; and Romans 5:8:

1. “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

   
   
2. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.

   
   
3. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.
    
   4. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
    
   Then there's the most popular verse in the Bible, John 3:16: "For God so loved THE WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son . . ."
    
   5. In addition, we read in I John 2:2: "And He Himself is the propitiation ("satisfaction") for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the WHOLE world."
    
   6. We conclude the list with I John 4:8: " The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love."
    
   The Bible is soaked with statements of God's love. It was that love that sent Jonah to the Ninevites. 
   
    And over and over again, we find God's statements to Israel that He loves them with an everlasting love. Hosea 11:1; Isaiah 43:1, 4a; 54:10; Ps. 47:4
   
    
   It was Jesus' love for Jerusalem that brought Him to say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who have been sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling."
    
   To quote the lines from the hymn, "If That's Not Love:"
    
   He left the splendor of Heaven
   Knowing His destiny
   Was the lonely hill of Golgotha
   There to lay down His life for me
   

   And if that isn't love
   Then the ocean is dry
   There's no stars in the sky
   And the little sparrows can't fly
   
    
   Condescending politicians are infuriating as are those condescending men of the cloth who make such an outlandish statement. A professor at Dallas Seminary would tell the members of the graduating class, "You all are  pathetic. It's going to be years before your maturity catches up with you education." We would hope that the spiritual maturiety of  aforementioned member of clergy would soon catch up with his education.
   
     

I WAS ALMOST SCAMMED

 I know about scamming first hand: it happened to me when a scammer and his partner called to tell me I was to get a refund of $40.00. I won't go into the long story of the ins and outs of the deception, except to mention that on my computer screen they had pulled up my bank statement. Really! My bank statement. I saw it, it was right there. They were high tech slick operators. 

But, praise be, I caught on in time to stop their nefarious scheme and ignored their threats to send the police to my house to charge with trying to steal $40,000 from them! I told them to get the police to my house fast; that would be A-OK, it would be all right with me. 

Other scammers are at work. These are the prosperity preachers-- their scam is to use (i. e. abuse) an account in I Kings about a poor widow, her son, and the prophet Elijah and they, the scammers, are just as slick of the ones that almost got me. Let's examine how they skillfully work the scam.

In I Kings 7:7-17, Elijah the prophet finds that the brook has dried up and he's in need of water and food. God tells His poor prophet in need of food and water about a poor widow and her son, telling the prophet to go see her; she will give him water and food. 

Elijah finds the woman gathering sticks and asks her to bring him some water and bread. She's in such a desperate condition that she tells him,  “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

But the prophet tells her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. ¹⁴ For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”

 "She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. ¹⁶ For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah."

And now the sheep, having heard the scammer tell that story, are setup for the shearing. Just as seeing my bank statement had set me up for their manipulation, prosperity preachers abuse this story all the time. They tell the sheep, "Even if you're as poor as this widow is, God will bless you when you give to my ministry.")

What's happened is that, in their telling, Elijah has become the multimillionaire Joyce Meyer, (or whoever is telling the story) and the sheep have become the widow. The sharing of the bread and water have transformed into money. Therefore, based on the Word of God, the scammer says, "Financial blessings will be yours when you give to the me, the millionaire, no matter how poor you are and that's a promise from God. (The scammers conveniently leave out the millionaire part.) God is at the ready to pour out financial blessings on you like you couldn't believe, they're told."

It's amazing how these scammers can sleep at night.

What they've done is take a description in Scripture and turned it into a prescription for the sheep. This account isn't a prescription of what you're to do, it's a description of God's providing for a poor widow and her son, as well as His poor prophet. Both of them are poverty-stricken. What we're reading in I Kings 7 is not a promise God makes.

These prosperity scammers employ various scamming tools to work this nefarious scheme on the unsuspecting sheep who have no idea they're being conned. The prosperity charlatans use their best selling books, their CDs, television, and church auditoriums to go to work, and churches cooperate with them because they're as ignorant as the sheep. 

If your church library has any of the scammers' books, burn them. If your church has such CDs, throw them into the flames too. 

As long as the sheep stay ignorant and have even scant wool, the scammers will come with their shears.     

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT PART II

 It's difficult to see something hiding in plain sight; we can easily overlook what's not stated. As per last week, we saw that when the infamous serial adulterer, the one known only as "the woman at the well," became convinced that the Savior had now come and was talking to her, so she accepted by faith His offer and took a drink of the water of life, that is, she believed and was eternally saved.

What's hiding in plain sight in the evangelistic conversation in John 4 is that Jesus didn't demand that she feel sorry for her sins; He didn't order to stop living with a man who wasn't her husband; no admonition to clean up her life,no statement of "turn from your sins, no make a promise  promise to make Me the lord of your life. She met Him as a woman involved in adultery and she left saved as a woman living in adultery.

The one requirement for eternal life is faith alone in Christ alone as John states one hundred times in his Gospel. 

Let's move to something else that's hiding in plain sight: John the Baptist did not declare the same gospel message we do today. We see this by reading what he said when he presented his repetitive message the Bible calls the gospel ("good news") of the kingdom which was that the kingdom promised Israel in the Old Testament was at hand because your King has come!

In Luke 3, he's proclaimed that message, and the Jews listening ask, "Then what are we to do?" His answer was, “The one who has two ^[tunics is to share with the one who has none; and the one who has food is to do likewise.” ¹² Now even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what are we to do?” ¹³ And he said to them, “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.” ¹⁴ And soldiers also were questioning him, saying, “What are we to do, we as well?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone, nor harass anyone, and be content with your wages.”

We can see this isn't the good news we preach today  by comparing John the Baptist's message with Paul's in I Cor. 15: "Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, ² by which you also are saved, if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

"For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

We see John's message was not that of Paul's when we read Galatians 2:16: "a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law; since by works of the Law no flesh will be justified." We Paul's message of the gospel in Romans 4:4-5: "Now to the one who works, the wages are not credited as a favor, but as what is due. ⁵ But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness."

When we look at John's message in Luke 4, his is filled with works such as  giving  your clothes and your food to others; stop harassing people, don't extort higher taxes than the law allows, in other words,  "Stop these sins and start sharing,"

With the woman at the well, there was no, "Stop all this adultery and clean up your miserable, sinful  life.!" The message to her was, "Accept My free offer of eternal life."

What's the difference? The difference is John's message and his audience, as he states right off the get-go of his mission, is, "Get prepared, Israel, for your King who is now here." It's a message of get ready to accept His offer of the kingdom promised to you. His was a message for Israel. The King came. They rejected their King, shouting, "We have no king but Caesar!"  Therefore, the kingdom is now postponed.

Paul's message, Jesus message to the woman at the well were not the same as John's, nor should ours be.  

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT PART I

There's an account in the Gospel of John which has been told and retold millions of times in church history down to right now today. It's the account an an encounter Jesus had with a woman at a well, a woman as immoral as they come a serial half-breed adulteress. The woman of no name whom we know as "The Woman at the Well," as recorded for all time in John 4. And it's in that chapter that a huge, big-time truth hides in plain sight. 

You know the story. John tells us that Jesus "had to pass through Samaria." This is the land of the much despised by the Jews, low-class Samaritans. Now, Jesus' disciples wouldn't even give her the time of day, so, Christ has to send them away to get some food while, He, tired from the trip, sits down by the famous well Jacob dug long, long ago. 

It's the hot time of the day and here comes the woman to draw water. The best time for this chore is later when it's not so scorching hot. But she comes at noon because no other women will be there and she won't have to endure their censorious looks, crude comments, and their ostracism. 

She sees that there's a Jewish Man there (she recognizes His Jewishness by the way He's dressed.) Lo and behold, He says to her,"“Give Me a drink." This surprises her, so, she asks, “How is it that You, though You are a Jew, are asking me for a drink, though I am a Samaritan woman?” John makes an editorial comment for his Gentile readers who aren't familiar with the long-established hostility existing in that day when he explains, "For Jews do not associate with Samaritans."

The conversation continues as Jesus replies, "“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 

She's been doing this burdensome chore of hauling water for so long that she wants to know about such water. Jesus explains, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” 

To her, this must have sounded like what will later be known as The Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon would seek in Florida in the 14th century. She want's a drink.

The Stranger switches the subject and His command shock her:“Go, call your husband and come here.” The woman answered and said to Him, “I have no husband.” Jesus *said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this which you have said is true." How in the world could a complete Stranger know intimate and sinful details which she tried to cover up?

She now perceives that something is going on, so, she thinks He must be a prophet. She has a burning question for Him--she wants to know the answer to a long-standing argument between the Jews and Samaritans. The $64 question is, "Who's right? Are we Samaritans to worhip here or in Jerusalem like the Jews say?"   

The conversation continues by her saying that when the Messiah comes, He'll give us the answer. Then comes the bombshell: She's talking to Him!

She believes Him. She drops her water pot and takes off for town to say to the men, "So the woman left her water pot and went into the city, and said to the people,  “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is He?” They rush out of the city: "They left the city and were coming to Him." Many of the men believe Him saying that they too are convinced  that Jesus is the Messiah, "the Savior of the World."

Now did you see it? Did you see what's been hiding in John 4 for 2,000 years/ It's right there, right before our eyes and has been there for a long, long time. 

She's now a believer. But did you notice what Jesus did NOT say to her. He didn't say, You have to feel sorry for all those adulteries you've committed. You have to leave the husband you're with now. Or to phrase the way one pastor did erroneously thinking that James 4:7-10 is the way to gain eternal life: [Woman,], "Submit therefore to God. But ^[h]resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come close to God and He will come close to you. [Woman], Cleanse your hands, you sinner; and purify your heart, you ^[i]double-minded. Be miserable, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom, [Then and only then, believe in Me.]

What's been hiding in plain sight is that she came to Jacob's Well an adulterous woman and left an adulterous woman, forgiven and saved by drinking the living water. As the book of Revelation concludes, "The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires, take the water of life without cost.