The Conflict in Israel (Part 1)

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Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

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I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Chris Giesler, Michael Durham, David Kassin. And today we are going to be covering a subject that has been large in the news, in our minds, and in our hearts as there are many people and the world is being affected by the current conflict between Hamas and Israel, and we are going to be starting out by thinking through how should

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Christians respond to such a matter, to such events, and how should we view it, obviously, through the

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Bible, but what does the Bible have to say for us Christians about how we're supposed to view this? Michael? Well, we need to reach into the scriptures and be careful that we build a paradigm to build a response from the word of God, and I think that's the desire of all

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Christians. We want to be biblical. So how do we respond to, let's say, first of all, war between two nation -states, between two groups, between two political entities with violence on the mind, one aggressor, one defender, how do you respond to that?

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We've been thinking a little bit about that because of Russia and Ukraine, but also now we have Hamas and Israel.

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How are we to respond as Christians? The lazy thing to do is to watch a news channel or two and be told which side we are to take, and then consider one side to be the evil villain, black hat, wearing goons, and the other side the freedom fighters that are all oppressed, and let's support them.

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And that's not the way that the Bible would lead us to interpret war and violence in our world today.

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So particularly concerning the battle going on between those in the Gaza Strip who are fighting and those in Israel who are fighting, there's a whole lot of people caught in the crossfire, and in the

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Christian response we're going to think about everybody involved, not just soldiers. We're not going to think just about terrorists or just about politicians and soldiers in Israel.

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We're going to think about all the different types of people who live there. We are to pray for all people, not just some.

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We had talked earlier that it isn't just an American Christian response.

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This is not just the church in the United States. Granted, you're dealing with your own local context, and whoever's listening to this even months or years from now, what you're saying is that this should be the

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Christian response regardless of whatever your local community might be.

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We have been given a cultural hermeneutic or a political hermeneutic to interpret the events going on in Israel.

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What we need is a biblical hermeneutic to begin to look at what is going on over there. I think that there is a story in the

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Bible that can help us with this. In Acts 11, beginning in verse 19, we pick up on the story of what happened to the

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Christians who fled Jerusalem because of the persecutions of Saul of Tarsus.

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It was said that he was breathing threats and murder, and that many of the saints fled.

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We read that back in Acts chapter 8, and just after that we read about Philip, and then we read about Saul's conversion and Peter's journeys, but then we come back to all the rest of the people.

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In verse 19, we read now, those who were scattered—actually, David, because of my voice, I'm going to ask you to read verses 19.

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Just read verses 19 through 30 for us. This will be great. You got it. I'm reading from the ESV, the

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Church in Antioch. Verse 19, now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.

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But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists, also preaching the

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Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the

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Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

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And he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad. And he exhorted them to all remain faithful to the

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Lord with steadfast purpose. For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.

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And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul.

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And when he had found them, he brought him to Antioch for a whole year. They met with the church and taught a great many people.

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And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians. Now in those days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

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And one of them, named Agabus, stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world.

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This took place in the days of Claudius. So the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.

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And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

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So when we read this story, we hear that the scattered Christians from Jerusalem, as they ran from the persecution, they were still preaching the gospel.

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And some of them who were from North Africa, which is Cyrene, and then from the

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Mediterranean island of Cyprus, could speak Greek pretty well. And so what they did is that they preached the gospel to Greek speakers there in Antioch.

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And by God's grace, many Gentiles began to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Word of that comes down to Jerusalem.

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The Jerusalem church says, we want to know more about that. Just like they sent the apostles down up to Samaria to see what had happened with Philip's evangelism and sent

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Peter out to strengthen the churches that were in the larger Judean region. They also felt the need to send

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Barnabas to check things out in Antioch and to strengthen what was going on there. When he gets there and he sees the scope of the work, he is excited, but he knows he needs help.

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So he goes and gets Saul of Tarsus, and they work together for a whole year to grow this church and to encourage this church.

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And then there becomes an opportunity to help serve the brethren down in Judea and Jerusalem because they were going through a famine and the

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Lord let them know in advance this was going to happen so they could get ready. Now that's a pretty good story in and of itself, but when you look at the historical note about when the famine came in the days of Claudius Caesar, let's think about the background going on here.

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The time frame we have here in Acts 11 matches to the mid -30s

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AD, and we have a situation in which to the mid to the late 30s, tension between the

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Gentile population and the Jewish population of Antioch were not going well. Some of the

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Gentiles there in Antioch began to kill, to persecute and to kill violently pursued

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Jews who had their own way of living, their own way of doing things, which really irritated a lot of people, and the

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Jews had their own little community southeast of Antioch. So Jews are dying and word comes to Jerusalem.

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Now Caesar, generations ago, had given jurisdiction of all Jewish affairs to the

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Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, no matter where it was in the Roman Empire. And so the Sanhedrin felt the need to go protect these

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Jews getting killed by Gentiles up there in Antioch. They sent an army, tens of thousands of men, up to Antioch, and they begin something almost akin to a civil war, and the

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Jews start killing the Gentiles who had been killing the Jews. Violence is breaking out everywhere, and it is right around this time that the gospel is getting preached in Antioch, and people are coming to faith in Christ, and Barnabas goes up there and brings

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Saul into the mix. Now Caligula was the emperor at this time, it was near the end of his reign. Caligula does not like what he hears.

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He gives instructions to the local troops to take drastic measure.

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He brings the hammer down hard. The Jews revolt against him, things are getting more and more unstable. One of the

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Roman generals on the scene refused orders from Caligula because he knew that it was not going to go well.

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He then receives a letter from Caligula that gets to him that tells him, because you've disobeyed my order, your new order is to kill yourself.

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Thankfully by that time Caligula had died, so he didn't have to follow the order, because the new Roman emperor was

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Claudius, as we read down. Now the famine that broke out down in Judea was because of all the unrest.

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The Jews were not able to plant their crops as normal, then they observed a Sabbath year following that, and now there was a massive food shortage throughout the region.

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One of the magistrates in the Judean region, she was trying to bring in all manner of food from foreign sources, but that food was going to be distributed by the

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Sanhedrin. What about all the Christians in Jerusalem and Judea? They're going to go without. So think of this.

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The Christian church in Antioch, made up of mostly Gentiles, who have been converted out of killing

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Jews, are now sending food to mostly Jews who have been converted unto

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Christ down in Judea and Jerusalem. They're loving one another. They're caring for one another.

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They're at peace with one another. It's the vision of Isaiah 2, where they've come up Mount Zion, Hebrews 12 says, a mountain that cannot be touched, and the sword they once bore at each other's throats have been beaten into plowshares, and now they are co -laborers in the harvest.

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They're loving one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another.

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And lo and behold, they were first called Christians in Antioch, and I think this gives us a model of response.

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Very good. You brought up Isaiah, where he talks about beating the swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

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Nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. And that sounds like a fantastic promise, and yet we see that there are wars.

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Right now, multiple wars, seeming like. And so the question becomes, well, what is the answer to this?

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And you brought up Isaiah 2, Isaiah 9, 6, we read this during Christmastime, for to us a child is born, a son is given, and a government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called

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Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Like, that seems like the antithesis to war, would be peace.

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So in this conflict we have, and you described the Christians there, and what they were doing, it seems like the people, the

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Gentiles, the Jews, were reconciled because of Christ.

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Because they had been saved. And now, their aggressors, the other side, whichever side they were on, the other side, were now their brothers, and now their sisters.

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I think that would go a long way towards reconciliation. What about the current situation with Israel, the

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Palestinians? Well, I would say that the solution remains the same.

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This is a passage that we've all heard many times, and it just, every time you read it, especially in the current conflict, and the story we just heard out of Acts, Ephesians 2 says,

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For he himself, meaning Christ, is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, abolishing the law of commandments expressed in the ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

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There is no peace between those who hate God and those who love

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God. People who hate God hate God's people. But those who love

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God can love each other, and forgive each other for things that are happening to them, things that happen to their ancestors.

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It's easier, I wouldn't say it's easy. It's easier to forgive someone who's done something wrong when you are more aware of your sin and what you have done to your

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Savior. When you have a greater understanding of the price that was paid on your behalf, you get a better idea of why

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Jesus would use that analogy, use that parable about how horrible that slave was who was forgiven an enormous amount of debt that he could never repay, and then goes to his fellow slave and says,

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Give me back what you owe. And the master was like, I just forgave you all of this. So the idea is that we can be forgiving because we have been forgiven.

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And if you have a strong knowledge of that, then that starts to break down those walls, and you start to build bridges of peace that's built on the person and work of Christ.

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And this is obviously a supernatural act. We're going to underscore that. You all want to look up 1

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John 3, 10 -18. This is going to give us very particular instruction from the

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Word. Something that, you know, these are the themes that David was just talking about, kind of applying the idea from Ephesians 2, getting down to some practical things.

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You said 1 John? 1 John 3, verses 10 -18. You want to read that, Chris? Yes.

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In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.

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For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of the wicked one, and murdered his brother.

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And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brothers righteous. Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you.

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We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.

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Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

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But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?

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My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

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Okay, so one of the themes of 1 John is clarifying who are the people of God, who are

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God's people, who are the children of God. How do we know which is which? And in the previous chapter, chapter 2, it talked about those who went out from us, but they were not really of us.

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And then defines Antichrist as the one, as those denying that the

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Son of God has come in the flesh, or that Jesus has come in the flesh, the

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Messiah has indeed arrived. The only people who would be denying that would be the stewards of the

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Old Covenant there in Jerusalem at the Old Covenant Temple. So now in chapter 3, verse 10,

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John is saying, we know, it's not a mystery who the children of God are. There are those who love one another, who love the brethren, and those who hate.

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So Cain, we know, Cain and Abel were from the same parents, but they were not of the same people.

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Cain hated and murdered his brother. And so John is saying, do not marvel my brethren if the world hates you.

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And the contrast he just made was between two brothers. And the people persecuting the early church were the

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Jews. And John is a Jew. And a lot of the first audience of the church are

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Jews. But he says, do not marvel my brethren if the world hates you. What did he just do there? He just said, those who are of Christ and love one another are brethren.

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The nations become brethren in Christ, and it doesn't matter if you have an ethnic biological brother, they're of the world if they hate you.

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So he's redrawing all the lines. And when we're listening to the news, we're being given lines drawn on a map.

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But those are not the lines that the Bible draws. The nations that we read about in Isaiah 2 do not learn war anymore.

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In Isaiah 9 and Isaiah 2, they don't learn war anymore because they have a prince of peace, Shiloh, to whom it all belongs.

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He comes and he rules in peace. These nations are the nations listed in Genesis 10. The families of the earth that have blessing in the seed of Abraham.

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Genesis 12 and Genesis 22, which we're going to talk about that in a future episode. But back to verse John 3, it says, verse 16, by this we know love, because he laid down his life for us.

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Ephesians 2. We see what did he do by his life and death and resurrection. So we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

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And look at this practicality. If we have the world's goods and we see our brother in need, we should not shut up our heart from him, but we should love him in deed and in truth.

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So what is our response to the current conflict? You know, there was two Gospels in the time of Christ.

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There was the Gospel, the Evangelion of the Roman Emperor, and he would come out and say, this is what's good for the whole empire.

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I've got my plans and here's what I'm going to do for you, and I'm your savior. He would call himself the savior of the empire.

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And he had all of these social programs and all these statist solutions, and it was a new Gospel about every three months.

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But then, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who's the real King of Kings, the real Lord of Lords comes, and it's not

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Caesar's Lord, it's Jesus' Lord. Here comes his good news, and there is hope for all nations, but how are we to view the conflict going on?

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Are we to pick sides? Oh, I'm on the side of Hamas. No, I'm on the side, no, we're not to pick those sides.

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We're going to need to be concerned for the people who are dying without Christ. But we are to do good to the household of the faith.

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We are to give first and care for first those who belong to Christ.

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Jesus says in Matthew 25, the least of these my brethren are those whom he is first and foremost concerned about that we would serve and that we would help.

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There are a lot of well -meaning Christians who want to help the

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Jews because they want to do what's right, and they're supposed to be the chosen people of God.

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That's their reasoning, and my question to them is, I know you're trying to help,

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I mean we're talking about a political ally, but you know there are Christians on both sides of that border.

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Who are they? Do you know who they are, and are you willing to help? Because we just described out of Ephesians and Acts and out of 1st

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John how you have Christians who are Palestinian, who are

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Arab, who are ethnically Jewish, or other, fill in the blank there, and these are brothers and sisters.

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All of these people in this local region, and there are brothers and sisters, and they're caught right now in the middle.

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You want to have a really persecuted group. The Palestinian Christians are kind of hated by the

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Palestinians because they're seeing something of traitors because they're not Muslim, and they're kind of hated by the other side because they're not

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Jewish. So they're sort of caught. Now granted, as far as history of religious tolerance goes, you can be

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Christian and walk down the street in Tel Aviv, and you'd be okay. I mean sometimes there are stories of Christians who've gotten spit on, sure, but they don't have rockets shot in their car and in their apartment, and they're not slaughtered in the streets.

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So as far as religious tolerance goes, let's be careful to delineate that, but you have

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Christians on both sides of this conflict, on both sides of this border who are caught in the middle, and we should first be focused on the household of faith.

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You want to talk about the people of God? Those are Christians. But I think there's a word that I keep hearing thrown around a lot by conservatives, by political pundits, this idea of moral equivalency, and when they try to talk about what one side has done versus what other side has done, this side is more brutal than the other.

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The problem though is that when you try to get into the discussion of moral equivalency, all have fallen short of the glory of God.

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Amen. We're on a certain level, you're talking about conflicts, sure, we talk about war crimes and different things like that, but ultimately you're trying to say they did wrong and they did wrong, and this goes back for thousands of years because there's no sense of ending.

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If there's no forgiveness, it doesn't end, and there's no forgiveness without Christ. Our moral failure is with God first and foremost.

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You talked about Ephesians 2, the wall of hostility. Where does that hostility come from?

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Well, it's in the heart of man. It's there in everyone that is not saved, that has not become part of Christ.

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We love because he first loved. We love him first and foremost because he first loved, and because of that, we're able to love our brothers, but it goes further than that.

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Who do we love? We love our brothers. We love our neighbors. We love our enemies.

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The Bible does not give any excuse for not loving any group of people, and that's the

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Christians. So it seems that the only way forward is the gospel, and getting caught up in secondary issues is less helpful.

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Not that we can't have those conversations, not that they can't be beneficial practically. What do we do with aid and different things like that?

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But what should the Christian response be? Obviously, prayer.

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What side should we take? Often when Jesus is asked to take a side, his answer is no.

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It's not framed correctly. It's not right. And I see that happening just in our culture today.

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It's not being framed correctly. John's doing sort of the same thing there, where he is recognizing, hey, these things are going on around us.

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There's a certain group that is doing these things, and they'll love the brethren. He's kind of ignoring a lot of the implications of the violence and getting right to the heart of this is what we should be doing, loving the brethren, giving need when we have the ability to give those in need.

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And obviously, a part of that is prayer, like you mentioned earlier. But what other things from the

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Bible or from text can we kind of draw out practically what the

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Christian should do in action other than prayer or giving in need? How can we play that out?

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Chris, I think you hit on, I think, a really important point that the hostility between these two groups is inherent in the heart of man.

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There is no program. There is no A. There is no nothing that's going to stop those two people from hating or mistrusting each other.

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There's not a political force. There's not a group of nations. There's no councils that will fix that. Yeah, I agree with you 100%.

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I had somebody look me down the face and say, what's your solution? And I was like, I don't have a solution that you could enact from the

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U .N. or from any NGO. The only solution that I can see is for both sides to legitimately become

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Christians and forgive each other. Right. And what you're saying, it may not just not be solutions, it may be exacerbations.

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When we add money into places, we hear the phrase, you get more of what you subsidize.

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In the same way, if we are giving money to countries who end up supporting Hamas or if Israel ends up taking money and somehow supporting

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Hamas in some way, they're exacerbating those situations that they've already found themselves in.

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You're subsidizing more of that heart of man, and it's expressing itself because it now has capital to move about and do all the things it's wanting to do.

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If the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, pouring money on that problem is probably not going to help.

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No, no, not at all. So you alluded to pouring money into an area where you can exacerbate a problem.

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The most recent one before that was Ukraine. Yes. And you have Russia and Ukraine. And somebody says, well, you have the two

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Christian nations fighting each other. Well, the actions of these people is not what

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I'm reading in 1 John chapter 3. You know that you are of Christ by their actions.

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I don't care whether they have a cross around their neck or if they happen to go to fill in the blank church on Sunday.

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Go back a little bit further. My heritage, Northern Ireland, those two

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Christian groups fighting each other. Well, by their actions, I would say that many of those people were not Christian.

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They probably entered a church on Sunday, probably had a cross around their necks, may have gone to confession or something else or been baptized or whatever else and had all the accoutrement of being a

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Christian, but were not because their actions didn't back it up. How about one of the bloodiest wars in Europe, the Thirty Years' War?

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You know, we were in kind of the Reformation season. You know, there's the Catholics and Protestants. So people will say, well, look at the

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Muslim Palestinians and the Jewish Israelis are fighting each other. I said, well, we just think they should become

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Christians. Here's three examples I can cite you right now of Christians fighting each other. I said, that's not what 1 John describes.

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Christians, real Christians, regardless of their ethnicity, love and forgive one another.

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They try to live in harmony. We are sinful and we do fight and we do bicker and some of those things can bubble over.

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But those in contrary, that is contrary to the teachings of the Scriptures, that's a part of our flesh, that's a human failing.

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Christianity, how will people know that you are mine? By the love you have for one another.

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So, to go back to Acts, when we see their response, there's a need, a need that came out of war.

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Okay? There's a famine down in Judea, there's a problem. And you had displacement because Claudius had displaced the

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Jews out of Rome. He exiled them so you had an influx of people coming into another region.

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Yes. So you see what happened in one part of the empire affected another part of the empire and there was a great need.

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How did they send the need in Acts 11? How did they send the need, as you read about it, at the end of 1

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Corinthians and then through a healthy section of 2 Corinthians and Paul references it in Philippians and so on.

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How was that need sent? Now you say, well, they kind of send it in some quaint ways because, you know, it is the ancient

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Near East and they don't have all the technology that we do because I can just, you know, click PayPal and send my virtue signaling, guilt assuaging, shame erasing money out into the void, especially when

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I tell people about it. I mean, that's not a Christian response, right?

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You know, text this money, you know, text $10 to Haiti and, you know, really benefited the

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Clintons. You know, no Haitians ever saw it. That's not Christian giving. That's pagan giving.

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That's the same thing as going to a pagan temple and throwing money at a pagan god saying, make everything better.

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When we find Christian giving in the New Testament, we find that there are men of high character who are well known, they are established in their bona fides as faithful men, and they personally, directly, some way, they are able to take what is needful to those who are in need and who meets them.

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Other men who are the leaders, by God's own standards, they're in Timothy and Titus, who are saying, yes, we are holding these resources in trust, and you say, well, what about, what happened to the deacons?

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Why is it, you know, apostles and elders, you know, transferring the funds? Well, they were the leaders of the churches.

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But then, what happens then? Yes, the monies were brought to the apostles' feet, we read about in Acts 4, but then what do they do?

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They say, well, we can't handle the logistics of getting out, and they would give that to the deacons, and then the deacons would go see to the needs.

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But there was a lot of accountability. So I would say that even though when Jesus says, when you give, don't let the right hand know what the left hand is doing, he is saying, don't give so as everybody knows, you know, what a good person you are.

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So when Jesus says, don't let the right hand know what the left hand is doing, he doesn't mean that the hands should be dirty, right?

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There should be clean hands in the transfer of the funds. And that's kind of a, they're not using a state apparatus to transfer funds or a state -controlled apparatus in any way.

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No. So, like, if we're going to be making networks or connections with people in Palestine or Israel who are brethren, we might be looking for independent, like,

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Christian people who can get those funds or get those to other people in need rather than, like, a big, what would you call it?

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Bureaucracy. Like a big bureaucracy or big tenant organization that's, like, a general giving. Things we've learned from the Ukraine war so far is getting real good practical help to believers in need and so that they could also be a blessing to the non -believers around them in the name of Christ.

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What ways has that worked? Well, not by sending it to a bureaucracy, not by, you know, not like the

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Berlin Airlift, you know, just dropping canned food on people's heads, but we get it to pastors who are known and trusted who are in Ukraine but not in the hot spots and then they bring it closer to the, you know, there's a staging.

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And that can still, that can happen in the Hamas -Israel war going on right now where there are going to be trusted

30:28

Christians that we need to know who they are and this is going to happen by way of recommendation, but there's going to be somebody in Egypt who's going to find, a

30:40

Christian in Egypt who's going to get things to somebody in southern Hamas who can get things up to a little bit, southern

30:45

Gaza, they can get up a little bit more. There's going to be a Christian in Lebanon who's going to be able to, or maybe northern

30:51

Israel who's going to be able to take in some help and then get it down to where it needs to be. I've gotten letters already, one missionary says, by God's grace our missionaries have already helped to provide over 1 ,500 meals for displaced families and others during the war.

31:05

We are also continuing to hold Bible studies, distribute the New Testament, and share the hope of the gospel everywhere we can, and that's the

31:12

Christian response. And to clarify, we can have church bureaucracy too, right?

31:17

So we need to be careful about that. There are church bureaucracies out there who would want to take your money and funnel it through their system in order to get it to places over there, but maybe the most efficient and most trusted way is finding individuals within that area.

31:32

One red flag is if your pastor's buying jets, it's probably not going to the right place.

31:37

Right, or even like denominational level of mission funding,

31:44

I'm a little leery of that personally. There's plus and minus to a large cooperative giving program, but it's the larger the apparatus and the larger the pot of money is, the easier it is to be wasteful with that.

31:58

The examples that we just read in the scripture were it's very targeted, it's given to this amount, given to these men, this is

32:05

Paul's collecting stuff, he collected from Ephesians, collected some from the Corinth, and says, hey, if you guys want to give,

32:12

I'm coming, and you can bring that stuff here, and in a recent study school lesson said, and we're going to bring it to Jerusalem, and it was a network of churches who were doing it with trusted men, and you can get that in close.

32:29

And even in that, there are people that would seek to gain from it.

32:34

When Paul was, he was bringing the money to Jerusalem, and he was arrested, and there's a little bit of insinuation that Felix was holding him for longer because he thought, well,

32:44

Paul's got a bunch of money, maybe I'll get some of that, and he'll let him out. Something else to observe, again, we dismiss features of these giving stories in the

32:53

New Testament because, well, we have a presentist bias, and it's like, oh, that's an old -fashioned way of doing it.

32:59

But notice that the giving for the relief came after the significant amount of time after the critical crisis.

33:10

The war happens in Antioch, great violence, difficulty, problems, and it's only later on that the real needs start mounting up and become really apparent, and it's then that the

33:22

Christians are stepping in, and waiting until the situation is more clear, waiting until the needs are better known, waiting until it is not the fashionable thing to do, waiting until the news cycle goes away, the test of real fidelity is long -term.

33:41

Yeah, you're not being ruled by your emotions, you're not giving out of that feeling, you're actually giving a little time to everything to kind of calm down so you can look at it more rationally and give more sustainably.

33:54

So we just think about it, let's say three years from now, two years from now, 18 months from now, the needs are going to be a lot more well understood.

34:06

In the interim, what could we do? What could we do? We could investigate what would be a reliable network, we could figure that out, we could start planning and do logistics like Paul did, and set things up so that what is given will be given where it needs to go.

34:23

Now that is not what people want you to say, people want you to say, oh yeah,

34:31

I'm giving right now. Now may not be the time, because it may be wasted. So they don't want you to practice prudence with that giving.

34:40

Yeah. So the Christian response to this, we've seen in the scriptures that we need to be helping the church of God, regardless of what their ethnicity is, and we're not always sure who that is, but people closer to the hotspots, closer to the conflicts, there are trusted people around there and you may not have direct contact, but your church might, or the church might have contact with someone who has contact.

35:07

So there could be that network of trusted men, and trusted missionaries and people that are on the front lines can get that stuff to the church that is scattered throughout these areas of conflict.

35:21

I would say also church's response should be don't forget about them. It's easy to say, oh, because I've had to remind people that there's your brothers and sisters of the church is there on the ground, and they're getting rockets shot at them too.

35:35

The only news story that people are familiar with is the Palestinian Christian hospital that was at a misfire rocket that landed right in front of it and really hurt some people.

35:44

There are some organizations that are out there, I think there's a Voice of the Martyrs, and there's a missionary fellowship, and there's a couple of organizations out there that want to help.

35:53

But especially people here in this room, we would be less inclined to say, well, please raise my taxes so that I can go to the federal government, and then we can have more money sent over to the political state of X, and then they will help end this conflict.

36:08

I think that would be opposite for the Christian response. I don't think that what we've read in the scriptures so far would say that is a godly way to use the money that God has given you.

36:19

Dig a lesson from the history of the Roman Empire. The words of Justin Martyr to his opponents is like, we're in your marketplaces, we're in your cities, we're in your palaces, we're everywhere throughout your entire society.

36:33

We have left you only your temples. And in the conquering of the Roman Empire by the fire blazing of the

36:39

Holy Spirit from before the throne and taking over all of the Roman Empire, it was only later on that Constantine sees a political opportunity, and by this sign, conquer, and he takes up the sign of the cross, and he sees a political expediency and help to him to identify himself as a

36:58

Christian. Now was he a real Christian? Probably, maybe not, who knows.

37:04

But why would a politician in the United States of America, let's say, let's give some sort of equivalency here.

37:11

Let's say there is a president of the United States who is saying, you know, I'm a Christian and I want

37:17

Christians to get along, and I want you all to have some sort of conference that you all can get along better and agree about key doctrinal truths, and I'm really, you know, whoever seems to be on the winning side,

37:28

I'm going to go ahead and get baptized and join that side of the church. Why would a politician ever do that? Helps to centralize things.

37:34

If everybody agrees, tax base is larger. It's not because he's trying to make the nation into a

37:42

Christian entity, it's that there are so many Christians in the nation that he can't do political anything unless he's talking their language, understanding them, and so forth.

37:54

He's a result of something that's already taken place. And so what's the hope for Israel and, you know, the

38:01

Palestinian West Bank and Gaza and the rest of them? What do they need? They need, their populace needs to be filled with Christians.

38:09

You know, Christians stick out, they stick out. Families in Islamic countries, Christian families in Islamic countries stick out because the husband loves the wife, and they love each other, and they raise their kids in love, and they're like, wow, what's going on here?

38:24

And then, like, you're honest businessmen, and you don't cheat and lie, and all these things just kind of stand out, and then there's times of trouble, times of harsh, everyone's doing poorly, but, you know, the

38:36

Christians always seem to be taking care of each other. All of this just begins to pop, and it's like, wow, by this all men will know that you are my disciples.

38:45

So that begins to become clear, and then the nations begin to find peace in Christ, the actual nations, the people.

38:53

And then what can happen then is that the politics will follow, but not without genuine gospel preaching and salvation occurring first.

39:02

Amen. All right, so I think we have kind of a two -tiered, or a two -pronged Christian response. There is the practicalities of helping brothers and sisters, don't allow your money to be wasted in another political debacle.

39:17

A lot of the rhetoric that we hear, we heard about Ukraine, we heard about Syria, we heard about pick your conflict in the corner of the world, regardless of where you fall on this issue, is that this is not all that unique.

39:29

I have a lot of my Christian brothers and sisters who would say it's very much unique because of where it is, but what's not unique is the need to be there for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

39:41

In Christ. Brothers and sisters in Christ. In Christ, absolutely. And that just is universal, and that is something that transcends the nation state or AUN.

39:55

And the other is missionary work. There is a practical aspect, don't let your money be wasted, make sure it's pointed in the right direction, and there are ways to be shrewd with that and support missionary efforts in these hotspot corners of the world, especially where there is ethnic and racial hatred because the only peace between these people that have hated each other and killed each other for centuries is

40:21

Christ alone. I like how you were talking about, you used the term nation state when we were talking about these terms later.

40:28

I know we're probably going to get into this in the second episode, but one of the questions I have is when we're considering what the Bible talks about as a nation or peoples and that kind of being separate from the state, what we see with missionary work might be considered something akin to discipling that nation underneath all the conflict of the states, right?

40:47

So you have two apparatuses, two state apparatuses maybe going at it, whether you're in Ukraine, Russia, or wherever else around the world, but underneath that is an ethnoid, a people that need

40:58

Jesus. We see in Constantine's example, it was the people who were Christian first and then he follows suit.

41:05

For whatever reason, he follows suit afterwards, so we see state or states in general kind of lagging behind the ethnoid that they are supposed to rule over and that's our hope for the peoples is

41:19

Jesus for them and them discipling the state to follow akin to what they've done as well,

41:25

I think. It's what you kind of point out with that term in my opinion. Okay, well I think that probably wraps it up for episode one on this.

41:31

We will hit many, many other points, especially the differences looking at this conflict and in general moving forward, but we're going to go ahead and go on to what we recommend for content this week.

41:42

Chris, you want to start us off? Sure. I, in my Christian walk, have had many mentors who have helped me with different things and learning theology and coming out of one background and settling kind of in the

41:55

Reformed Baptist camp, emphasize heavily systematic theologies. So I'm just recently kind of coming to biblical theology and what is that and all that kind of stuff.

42:06

So I've found a YouTube channel that has been helpful so far.

42:11

I can't vouch for everything, but so far it's kind of helping to explain something. It's called

42:16

Cross to Crown Ministries and they talk a lot about New Covenant theology, but they go through what is biblical theology, how are we to approach the text, maybe more broadly than picking details out of the story and looking at the story.

42:35

I find that very difficult. Not sure why. I'm just like, let's systematize this and get all our ducks in a row.

42:41

And I don't know, I feel like Tolkien and he's describing all these details and you lose the story because he's describing a rock for like 13 pages.

42:50

It's like, yeah, okay, maybe let's get back to the story. But Cross to Crown Ministries on YouTube has been helpful recently.

42:58

I would argue that Tolkien is thoroughly worried about the story and probably would have been biblical theology if he hung out with us long enough.

43:07

Michael, what do you have to recommend this week? Yeah, the elders a few years ago read through a book called Not Just a Soup Kitchen and the person who wrote it is a guy named

43:16

David Apple and he talks about the complexities involved in giving.

43:25

Giving is one of the hallmarks of Christian life. I mean,

43:30

God gave us his son and we are to give as well. But God did not give his son haphazardly.

43:38

He gave his son preciously, carefully, precisely, thoroughly, genuinely, perfectly, powerfully.

43:48

How do we give? And when we think about what the Bible actually says about giving as Christians, it doesn't really match up sometimes with the ideas of giving that maybe come with new stories about war and disaster.

44:02

It doesn't necessarily match the social justice themes of reparations and giving to people because they have a different skin color or zip code.

44:13

New Testament emphasizes giving to fellow believers, giving to the church, giving to the household of the faith, and at the same time reminding us that we have a freedom.

44:23

Jesus told us you have freedom. The poor will always be with you and you may give to them whenever you wish.

44:29

It's not compulsion. It's freedom. There's liberty to it. Now, when we do give to people outside of the household of faith and give to the poor whenever we wish, not however we wish, but whenever we wish, and so David Apple goes through and talks about what does that look like from 10th

44:47

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and says what does it look like to give to people who are in need and the things to watch out for and the ways to actually do it lovingly and in truth and not just haphazardly because you feel bad.

45:00

David? This is a book that I'm pretty sure I have not recommended this yet, but this is a book on the atonement.

45:08

I read this a couple years ago. It was written in 2008. In my place condemned he stood, J .I. Packer and Mark Dever.

45:15

Mark Dever is pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist in D .C.

45:20

And many people know J .I. Packer. The question of the atonement itself, particular redemption, what did

45:28

Christ actually accomplish on the cross, I think it's an excellent treatment of it. And you may never read

45:34

John Owen's The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. It is a massive work, but there's an introduction to it written by J .I.

45:42

Packer. According to, I think it was Derek Thomas, it may be the best thing

45:48

J .I. Packer has ever written. The death, this introduction to the death of death and the death of Christ that you can't have somebody, well,

45:59

Christ actually died for individuals on the cross. And that's a specific edition, right?

46:05

For the J .I. Packer introduction? Yes, most likely. Every one, every edition that I've seen of John Owen's has

46:15

Packer's intro to it. So yeah, definitely, yeah, I would say it's probably a special edition.

46:22

It might be in my completed works of John Owen without that, but I don't remember passing by it.

46:27

So it may be the only edition. I'm just trying to figure it out. The introductory essay by J .I.

46:32

Packer is sometimes published by itself. Oh, yeah. And you can also, I think it's online, you can just read it.

46:38

There you go. If you can find that, do that. This book is something of an anthology.

46:44

You have stuff by Packer, you have stuff by Mark Dever, and you have an annotated bibliography, Lincoln Duncan, including books on the death of Christ.

46:52

So it's In My Place, Condemned, He Stood, Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement by J .I.

46:57

Packer and Mark Dever. You know, for context, 2008 was a great year. Everybody, you know, most of the evangelical, you know, sovereign grace reform people all came together and defended the atonement.

47:08

Against several assaults on it, everybody was really, you know, together for the gospel and everything was very much kumbaya.

47:16

It was a high point. Man, man, those were the days. And then in quarter three, the financial crisis happened and everything broke loose.

47:25

Yeah, I remember names like Lincoln Duncan and Mark Dever very fondly from those years, even though, you know, later controversies have all kind of colored it.

47:35

Yes. And there's some people who don't like Mark, you know. And I would say that read the stuff. I mean, the people that, you know, of course, we're talking like Sinclair Ferguson, Tim Keller.

47:44

There you go. There's a name that some people may not like. Thomas Schreiner, which actually was one of the books that we had gone through.

47:54

And then, of course, Tenth Prez, Philip Reichen. So it's just one of those books that I, when

47:59

I was investigating the atonement for myself, I very quickly became a four point

48:05

Calvinist, just reading the scriptures. But I had difficulty with particular redemption.

48:11

I did. And this was one of the books that helped me work through some of those issues myself.

48:18

OK, for me and Andrew, I'm going to speak for him right now. Our recommendation this week is that you send us recommendations for individuals that you see or know in either

48:30

Gaza or in Israel who are independent journalists or specifically Christians in those areas who are creating content and getting word out on how to help in these areas.

48:40

We want you to send recommendations into us. And we want to create a network, if we can, of Christians who are these trusted brethren, trusted men and women in these areas who may be able to transfer funds or goods or whatever it may be to brothers and sisters who are hurting in these areas.

48:56

So if you would continue to build a network of Christians around the world, we have the Internet.

49:01

It's a wonderful gift. And this is how we're going to use it to the glory of God to help our brethren, as we've seen in 1

49:07

John. So we're going to go around the horn and see what we're all thankful for this week. Chris? I am grateful for my wife and just everything she does and running the household while I'm away and the things that we get to do as a family because of her hard work.

49:21

We make jokes. I bring home the bacon and she slices it up. I give her the raw materials.

49:27

And then what she builds out of it is just amazing. And I'm grateful for her. I'm also thankful for my wife and all the folks that are helping her get things ready for our

49:36

Reformation celebration coming up this week. Yes. And it's fun to see all the displays and signs and materials set out as we get together.

49:44

It's basically going to be a big thanksgiving to God for the things that he did 500 years ago that we are still reaping blessings from.

49:51

Amen. David? I am also thankful for my family. I was able to come in late last night after being gone almost a week and was able to pick up Elizabeth from church.

50:07

And then we got to drive home. And then Amy and I just got to talk for a couple of hours and just going over calendar stuff and says, hey, are we going to be able to see family here?

50:21

Or would we be able to invite somebody over here during this time? Because I'm going to be travel industry.

50:26

I'm going to be working over Thanksgiving, working over the Christmas holiday. That's just the way it is right now. But I'm thankful that she has that heart to invite people in, make sure people are taken care of during those holiday times.

50:39

Are we going to have the ability to go and visit her family in Virginia and we can see some of those family members that couldn't come last time?

50:48

Because that's where her heart is. So I'm thankful for my family and for all the efforts that they make to keep our house kind of welcoming.

50:55

Well, I'm not going to speak for Andrew on what he's thankful for. So, Andrew, this was a great discussion today that really reminded me how grateful

51:03

I am to God for his giving of his son and the pouring out of the spirit upon his people that, yes, we are living stones being built together here in this room and here in this body.

51:17

But across this great creation that God has made, there are believers in other places that we are united to and that we can show that love and unity in Christ to them across a vast distance through the use of technology or even just messages through faithful brothers that make it to them, exhorting them to stay faithful to their master and to love others.

51:44

It's an amazing thing to think about how a conflict like what we just discussed can bring about greater unity for the body of Christ.

51:52

Amen to that. Kind of to piggyback off of that, I'm thankful for the spirit of God and the men at church here at Sunnyside and being able to learn the text, see the text, and exegete from it in order to, as you say, draw out cases for unity within the church during times of conflict.

52:09

I think Michael's correlation between the text and Acts 11 here and the conflict that we see has more than one connection and analogy that we can pick up from, and then what it does to the rest of the body when we hear that kind of connection.

52:23

We, as men in the church, being filled with the Holy Spirit, can make the other connections and we can use our giftings to start saying, hey, there's also this and this and this, and how we can help brethren in these conflict areas.

52:37

He sees the analogy for it, and then somebody else may pick up a way to actually fulfill it. So that type of spirit moving in men in local bodies is what we actually see in Acts too, and that's exactly what they did.

52:50

So this has been an extremely encouraging episode for us all, I would say, and we hope it's extremely encouraging for you all, whatever your views are on the situation over there, on how the brethren can be wrapped up in these places, but yet God is glorious and he does glorious things in these times.

53:08

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.