Choosing Life or Death in the Conflict in the Middle East (Rock Springs UMC)

Before I read the scripture, you'll remember maybe or maybe

not, that that last week I had said I was feeling led to

address the situation in the Middle East, particularly the

conflict between Israel and Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah, from

the pulpit. And I am proceeding with that

today. I will.

For what it's worth, this is the hardest sermon I've ever had to

prepare and I pray God's grace upon us as as I share it that

anything that's just of me that it would be quickly forgotten

and everything that's of God would would take root in US and

grow. I, I do want to say that I'm

Full disclosure upfront. I'm taking sides in that

conflict in in the sermon today, but I I really don't believe I'm

doing this out of partisan politics.

I my political beliefs are all over the all over the place and

some of my beliefs align with things the Democrat Party does

and teaches. Some of my beliefs align with

things Republican Party does and teaches.

Some of my beliefs say, you know, neither party wants to

have anything to do with there is no party large, prominent or

small that I am aware of that, that I wholeheartedly brace and

endorse everything they say and do.

So, so I, I, I what I have sought in this is to share a, a

biblical faithful framework that we can use to analyze this and

other situations. And I believe that framework

takes us in a specific direction.

I really don't care about the political parties behind it,

which which operate out of motives that that generally have

little or nothing to do with with Scripture in the Bible,

except to the extent that those parties can use those to promote

their agenda. And now I don't want to go down

that route either, but I'm treading as close to this line

as I ever care to get. If I, if I cross that line,

please see that as an inadvertent crossing of that

line. I don't mean to, I will say

again, as I've said before, you know, no one's ever going to go

to hell for disagreeing with me. And, and if what I say today you

take issue with and you want to talk about that, I am happy to

do that. I, there's a lot of, I went way

too long at Chester and, and, and so I got to even shorten it

down a little bit here, but there's a lot of information and

data behind what I'm saying. But I don't have time in this to

give source citations for everything.

If you want source citations and want to talk about where I got

the information, we can talk about that too.

But it, it'll just slow down things too much if I, if I cite

sources for every bit of data and information I present today.

So all of that said, I want to say that upfront by way of, I

don't know, free introduction or disclaimer, maybe just fair

warning, but here we go. The Scripture reading today is

Deuteronomy chapter 15. I'm sorry, Scripture reading

Deuteronomy 15 · chapter mention

today is Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 15 through 20.

Deuteronomy 30:15–20

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and

destruction. For I command you today to love

the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep

His commandments, decrees and laws.

Then you will live an increase, and the Lord your God will bless

you in the land that you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you

are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I

declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.

You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan

to enter and possess this day. I call the heavens and the earth

as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and

death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and

your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God.

Listen to His voice and hold fast to Him, for the Lord is

your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore

to give to your father's Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading and to the hearing

of His Word. I only have one slide today and

the rest I have in my notes, so I'm going to have my phone open

a little bit more than I usually do here.

This conflict has been going on for years and years and years

and years and years. It intensified greatly on

October 7th of 2023 and, and I thought briefly about addressing

the conflict at that point, but I discarded it, maybe out of

cowardice, I don't know. This is tough.

This is such a divisive thing. But it also at that time, as

important as it was, as significant it was, it seemed a

long way away from Meggs County, Ohio.

We don't have a substantial Jewish population in Meggs

County. We don't have a substantial

Muslim population in Meggs County.

And the United States was not directedly or actively involved.

And so it seemed, it seemed to be in, in some respects, you

know, not my business to speak or preach on that, given how

little connection we had to it. But things have changed.

Things have changed. the United States has taken an active role

in that conflict now. And even more than that, I had a

recent interaction at a local retail establishment, small

retail establishment. I was standing in line waiting

to check out and a conversation was going on in front of me and

I eavesdropped. I do that because I find it

entertaining. This time I didn't have a whole

lot of choice. The guy was talking very loud

and very energetically. And I, I entered in part way

through the conversation as I heard him saying something to

the effect of, and you know, there's going to be an attack on

American ship in the region and the ship is going to be

destroyed. And it will look like that Iran

did the attacking, but it'll be Israel operating under a false

flag. They're going to run up a flag

of Iran on their ship and attack one of our ships to get us to

enter the war against Iran on their side.

But it'll really be Israel that's attacking us.

And I being who I am, interrupted and said that's

ridiculous. That's not going to happen.

Israel is one of the strongest allies of the United States.

They're not going to attack one of our ships under a false flag

or any other flag. And then he immediately went

into, but don't you know, the Jews control the banks, the Jews

control the media, the Jews control the government.

And he started going on and on. And then the other person who

was present interjected and said, and, you know, in Germany,

they're demonstrating for our freedom in America.

At that point, I had that look on my face like, what?

I had no idea what you're talking about.

I didn't say that out loud. I looked at her and I said,

freedom from what? And she looked at me and said

the Jews and I realized this is a Meg's County issue just as

much as it's an American issue and a Middle Eastern issue and

an Israeli issue, that that the scapegoating of Jews and

anti-Semitism are rearing its ugly head again.

It's been around for thousands of years, and in Christian

nations and Pagan nations and atheistic nations and in Muslim

nations. Not all of that for the past

two, because not all of those kinds of groups have been around

for 2000 years. But over the past 2000 years,

all of those different types of nations have scapegoated Jewish

people to blame them for problems that existed in and

around them and their cultures and in their civilizations.

And egregious acts of violence were done against Jews simply

because they were Jews. And it's back.

It's back. And so I felt the need and

continue to feel the need to address this.

Now what? As I said before, my goal here

is not to address this from a partisan political perspective.

My goal is not even to address it from a a more generally

political National Alliance perspective.

Some histories involved, because history tells us what's been

happening and what's going on and puts things in context.

But really my goal here today is to to give us or remind us of a

faithful biblical framework through which we can analyze,

examine, and respond to this situation as well as many other

similar kinds of situations, whether on a very small personal

level or a global, international kind of level.

And this framework, I believe, is at the very heart of the

Scripture and of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And it really has to do with, and I didn't design things this

way. I hope it's the Holy Spirit and

not just getting too much sun in the heat yesterday.

I really believe that the framework is the question of

life and death, which we've been looking at since we jumped into

this walk through the Bible and the book of Genesis.

Again, I was not planning to preach this sermon as part of

this series. It just worked out that that

what I've been preaching for a few weeks now is relevant to

this today because we see from the very beginning, God is a God

of life. God created the heavens and the

earth, and God brought life into being and then and for humans

themselves, them, us, ourselves. He breathed into us His very

breath of life, and we became living beings.

God treated a garden and placed human beings in the garden where

we had everything that we needed for abundant, peaceful, joyful

life. And they're growing.

In that garden was a tree of life.

But there was another tree, the tree of the knowledge of good

and evil. And God said that's the only one

you can't eat from. Don't eat that.

Don't eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If you do, you will surely die. And they did.

And Adam and Eve brought death into the world and then Cain

took it a step further and causing the death of his

brother. And things just snowballed

downhill and out of control from there until violence, death and

destruction became the normal thing across humanity.

Jesus touched on this issue that goes all the way back to

creation explicitly when he said this.

He said I'm the Good Shepherd. I'm the Good Shepherd.

The sheep know my voice, they know my name.

They said thieves, Thieves come to steal, kill and destroy.

But I have come so that you can have life and have it in all of

its fullness. Life is at the heart of God's

purposes in this earth and among us to bring life, not death.

And I think that gives us a framework for looking at lots of

situations and making decisions in those situations to say, when

we say where is God in this situation, what is God doing?

God is almost always acting to bring life where our enemy, the

devil wants to steal, kill and destroy to bring death.

And that's why Moses, when they were at the edge of the promised

land, they'd spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness.

God freed them from slavery and, and, and they spent 40 years

wandering in the wilderness. Now they're on the verge of

entering the land that God had promised with him, not the

Garden of Eden itself, but a land of prosperity, a land of

plenty of land flowing with milk and honey.

And Moses said, look, you can have life or death when you go

into this land. If you follow God and stay

faithful to him and faithful to his ways of doing things, you

will have life. If you do not, you will have

death. And Moses framed the question in

very stark terms. I set before you life and death.

Choose life, choose life. So I think when we're looking at

challenging situations and divisive situations and

conflicts, including this conflict in the Middle East, a

good way to look at it is to ask who's bringing life and who's

bringing death, Which culture and civilization is bringing and

promoting life? Which culture and civilization

is bringing and promoting death now in the context of an active

war? Both sides are killing, right?

That's how war works. I don't remember.

I've been told I've read it before.

The first person that said war is hell, But war is hell.

There is no war without death and destruction.

Movies that glamorize it and make it look sexy and beautiful

and heroic and wonderful and there are many acts of heroism

that happened during war. But war is hell.

Urban warfare is even worse. It's the worst kind of hell

because you can't engage in urban warfare without cantilling

killing significant numbers of civilians, men, women and

children. And right now death and

destruction are coming from both sides.

So how do we sort out is 1 civilization and one culture

promoting life and one promoting death while both are killing?

But if we look at those cultures and at those civilizations, I

believe you can disagree with me, but I believe one of those

cultures and civilizations is promoting life and the other is

promoting death. Let's just compare.

And this is where I went along with with Chester I.

I got into reading my notes and it took too long.

I'm going to summarize because we don't have time to go through

all of the details, thinks about the things that in our culture

and civilization we know promote life.

Things like the freedom of speech, press, and religion,

allowing differences of opinion to be expressed freely and

openly. Israel has freedom of speech,

press, and religion. You can criticize the government

in Israel. You can do that as a private

citizen. You can demonstrate against the

government. You can do it in the media.

You can do it in social media. You can do it online.

You can do it on television. You can do it in print.

You can. You can criticize the

government. It's built into their

constitution, built into their DNA.

Israel and Hamas, the two other main actors in here, you cannot

criticize. There is no freedom of speech,

press and religion. Speech is controlled.

Protest and dissent against the government is restricted,

forbidden and punished, often by arrest and torture, or at least

arrest and imprisonment if not torture.

Israel is a democratic state. Free elections where where

people and it's an incredibly ethnically diverse country and

and people, whether it's Palestinian citizens or Jewish

citizens or Arab citizens or Christian citizens or Dru

citizens, they all get to vote and they get the same vote and

each one of their votes counts just as much.

Israel and Hamas are authoritarian.

Authoritarian 1's a military dictatorship, the other's a

theocracy. And when there are elections,

those elections are controlled and dominated to ensure a

particular outcome. There is no free participation

in the political process. And in Iran, in Iran, if you're

not part of the right religion and the right political

persuasion, you cannot hold high-ranking positions in the

government. In Israel, did you know there

are Arab members of Israel's governing body, that Knesset,

their equivalent to our Congress?

There are Arab members there. Did you know there is an Arab

person, I believe a Palestinian person on the Supreme Court of

Israel on this? Israel, from its founding, has

attempted to create a culture, a civilization there that allows

for freedom and openness and the expression of many different

viewpoints, many different perspectives.

Arts and the media are incredibly free in Israel, not

in Iran or with Hamas. The treatment of women might be

one of the clearest examples. In Israel, women's rights are

protected. They are equal with men.

They can choose who they marry. They can choose to get divorced.

They can choose what kind of clothes to wear.

And no clothing is forbidden for religious or you know, there's

nothing that's required or forbidden for religious or other

reasons. Women can hold have as much

education as men. They can hold high level

professional jobs like men. They can held high level

government and political jobs. One of the gold of my ear was

their first woman Prime Minister.

And when considered by many, not by everyone, there's, you know,

every group, every political leader, there's their promoters

and detractors was certainly a very powerful and influential

leader in Israel. Women cannot hold high level

positions in Iran or in Hamas. Their freedom and decision

making is limited. In Iran, a woman's testimony in

court is considered legally considered 1/2 as valuable as a

man's testimony. Women are restricted in what

they can wear. They required all women whether

Muslim or not are required to wear the hijab and if a woman

doesn't wear it properly she can be arrested, assaulted, beaten

in prison. Women have restrictions in their

freedom of movement and often have to get permission from

their husband or another male in their in their family for travel

and movement. One of the ways you can see the

difference between life and death in the two countries is,

is and the two cultures is how they wage war.

There is no doubt in Israel's war against Hamas in particular

and, and Hamas is a proxy Iran equips, trains, supports,

supplies, funds Hamas that in their war, particularly with

Hamas, lots of civilians have been killed.

They know that. Do you know the?

I might, I heard this from a credible source.

There was I was listening to a podcast.

I didn't write it down. I might be getting these numbers

wrong. If you want to challenge me on

it and check it if I'm wrong, I will certainly own it.

But I believe I heard this accurately that the

international standard for urban warfare, if you're going to wage

urban warfare, the international standard is that there should be

no more than three civilian deaths for everyone, military

death and urban warfare. So if you if you go into an

urban situation and there are 100 military personnel you're

trying to take out international standard is as you can't kill

more than 300 civilians while trying to take out the 100

military personnel. More than that you're looking at

war crimes. Israel's military urban warfare

against Hamas since 2023 has been a one to one ratio.

They have killed civilians. They have gone out of their way

to limit the number of civilian deaths and achieved a better

ratio than any nation in urban warfare and known history.

They've killed civilians. When Hamas attacked Israel on

August 7th, 2023, they intentionally killed civilians.

They went to the homes of civilians and they murdered men

and women and children. They raped women.

They put babies in ovens and turned the ovens on.

And they went on social media and filmed themselves, and they

celebrated in it, and they rejoiced in it, and they gloried

in it, and they were praised back home for it.

And here's the thing they were doing.

They were just doing what Hamas had said from the very beginning

of Hamas's formation they wanted to do.

Built into Hamas's original charter is the total destruction

of the nation of Israel and the killing of Jews.

Now Iran has built into their constitution the Islamic

Republic of Iran, established in 1979, built in their

constitution the total destruction of the nation of

Israel. It's an explicitly stated goal.

They don't explicitly state anti-Semitism, that we're going

to kill as many Jews as we can. They don't explicitly state

that. Here's an interesting factoid,

right? More than a factoid.

The largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of

Israel is in Iran, 8000 I believe.

Largest community, Jewish community outside of Israel is

in Iran. Their rights and their freedoms

are restricted and limited, but they're there.

Iran doesn't have to, doesn't state it explicitly, but it's

very clear from their support of Hamas and Hezbollah that they're

perfectly OK with that ideology. And some of their leadership has

said off record not acting their official capacities have called

for the death of Jews as well. But one Hamas leader, just as

one example said, and this was in 2024, said all of you

Palestinians living in the rest of the world, 7 million

Palestinians living outside of Palestine, you said there are

Jews all around you. It's your responsibility to kill

as many of them as you can. It's not a direct quote.

Again, if I get into my notes, I'll get lost in the weeds, but

that's the substance of it. There is a a moral, spiritual,

qualitative difference, I believe, between killing

civilians in an effort to defeat a military enemy that has

devoted itself to destroying you, and killing civilians just

to kill civilians to promote your own agenda and your own

politics and your own death seeking ideology.

I think there's a world of difference between those two

things. There have been accusations made

that Israel is committing genocide against the

Palestinians. History simply does not bear

that out. I am.

I'm going to get the numbers on this, so I am going to look this

one up. I got to get to the right spot.

Please be patient. See all of these notes.

This is why I was late getting here today.

Here we go. Palestinian citizens in Israel.

There have been Palestinians. Not not those living in Gaza,

the West Bank, but actual citizens of Israel.

Palestinian citizens in Israel. In 1948, when the modern nation

of Israel was established, there were 156,000 Palestinian

citizens in Israel. In 2024, there were two million

Palestinian citizens living in Israel.

Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank came under Israel's control

in 1967. Israel withdrew from them

completely in 2005. But in 1967 there were 1.4

million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.

In 2024, there was five and a half million.

You cannot claim genocide when a population is growing dramatic

dramatically and when even in warfare, Israel is doing

everything they can to limit civilian casualties.

Israel has been called a colonial nation.

I think that's a misleading statement as best There's no

mother country. You can't leave Israel and go

back to the motherland of the Jewish folks.

Israel is the motherland of the Jewish folks.

Israel is a refugee country where Jewish folks from all over

the world have moved moved to Israel.

More than half of the population in Israel are Jews who are

native to the Middle East. They're not a colonial country.

They're a refugee country providing life and hope to a

group of people who have been persecuted over and over and

over again, discriminated against, shunned, limited and

legal representation and rights and privileges, and out and out

killed and driven out in country after country for the past 2000

years. And Israel, the nation of

Israel, created to give them a safe place as refugees that they

can go. the United States, you might know this already.

Prior to entering World War 2, Jewish refugees coming on boats

to the United States were sent back to Germany.

Our country didn't want Jews here or any more Jews here, so

we sent them back. We didn't enter World War 2 to

save the Jews from the Nazis. It was a happy accident.

It was good that it happened, but that's not why we entered

the war. We entered to collect, protect

political and economic interests.

I've heard this said. I don't know if it's true.

I haven't traced it out, But I challenge you.

I, I don't know. I'm not even sure how you do the

research. I haven't had time to try, but

I've heard it said again from knowledgeable people that every

country in history that have has welcomed and embraced the Jews

that lived among them has prospered during the time that

they welcomed and embraced the Jewish folks living among them.

But that takes us back to that promise God made Abraham.

Through you, all nations of the world will be blessed.

Through you all nations of the world will be blessed.

And we know that the most dramatic fulfillment of that

prophecy is through Jesus Christ himself, who was and is Jewish

and is a blessing to all the peoples of the world so that

that family has been opened up. And we too can become part of

God's chosen people in the family of God through the saving

grace of Jesus Christ. But it also seems to be true

that simply through embracing and receiving the people God

chose to begin with, the Jewish people, that nations are blessed

with prosperity. There is.

I'm not trying to say Israel's perfect any more than I would

say that the United States is perfect.

I'm not saying that that being Jewish is an inoculation against

doing evil things. There are plenty of bad actors

in the world who are Jewish, just like there are plenty of

bad actors in the world who are Christian, plenty of bad actors

who are atheists, plenty of bad actors who are Muslims.

It's not an inoculation, but the culture and the civilization

that Israel is promoting and growing in that region is a

culture and civilization of life.

The culture and civilization of the Islamic Republic and of

Hamas and of Hezbollah is a culture and civilization of

death and destruction. And I believe that we as

followers of Jesus Christ have a responsibility to promote life

and have a responsibility to support life and those cultures

and civilizations that are promoting and supporting life.

One of the ways we can see it's you and I, we don't have any

direct impact on what's happening in the Middle East.

We don't through prayer, through prayer, but as individuals, no

one's calling us and asking our opinions.

And, and sometimes I think, boy, I wish they'd call me and ask my

opinion. I'm glad I don't have Benjamin

Netanyahu's job. I don't know what I would do if

if I had an enemy that was determined and equipped and able

and demonstrated its willingness to kill and destroy my entire

nation and every one of my fellow countrymen.

If I had an enemy that was doing that and they were hiding behind

hospitals and places of worship and and nurseries and preschools

and schools. If they were hiding behind there

saying you can kill us, but you'll have to kill them first,

I don't know what I would do. I'm glad that's not my

responsibility. So one of the things that we can

and we need to do is to approach this situation with humility,

recognizing that that that leaders get placed in very

difficult positions, having to make very difficult decisions.

And no matter what they decide, people will die.

And we can pray for those leaders that they listen to God,

that they choose life when possible.

I think the other thing that we have a responsibility for is to

stand up against scapegoating and bigotry in whatever form

they present themselves, whether it's anti-Semitism or

Islamophobia or racism or sexism, homophobia, any type of

bigotry that looks at a group of people and says, because they're

like that, you know, we can treat them badly.

And then when, when thing bad things are happening around us,

we find ourselves sayings, well, it's those people.

It's those people. They're bringing the wrath of

God on us. They're the ones causing it.

They're the ones that we have a responsibility to stand up

against that because there's nothing of Christ in that.

Nothing. In fact, it's the opposite.

I believe that to be a follower of Jesus Christ gives us the

responsibility to take responsibility.

There's a problem in our community that we don't get to

look for scapegoats and point our fingers at them.

It's our responsibility to bring life into our community.

And when there's death and destruction coming into our

community, it's not. We don't get the privilege to

find scapegoats and point at them and say it's their fault.

Let's just get those people out. It's our responsibility to take

responsibility for bringing life and hope and love and joy and

peace into a situation. And so we can't directly affect

what's happening in the Middle East, but we can stand against

bigotry in our community. We can pray for leaders.

We can take humility and, and, and, and, and exercise humility

when engaging in conversations about the situation.

We can do all of those things. And I believe that is choosing

life over death. I believe that is our

responsibility. I don't.

Again, this is the hardest sermon I've ever had to preach.

I've preached a lot of sermons over a lot of years and a lot of

difficult things. Hardest sermon I've ever had to

preach. And, and, and if I have left you

dissatisfied or, or disgruntled in some way because of this,

please come talk to me about it. I'm, I'm, I'm going to be out of

town this week, but you can message me.

We'll set up a time, we'll get together, have coffee, have a

slice of pizza, foxes, whatever you want to do.

And, and we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it.

But my hope and my prayer is that whatever we're doing, our

motive behind it is to choose life, the life of God, over the

death that our enemy wants to bring upon us.