Israel - He who contends with God

A few days ago, I received an email from my brother, and in it he said something very profound about the current war in Israel. He said, “This war is between God and Israel. Israel needs to return to God. How many miracles has God done and yet He is still put aside”.

The current war Israel is fighting goes far beyond merely a war with Hamas in Gaza, since it now includes confrontation on seven fronts, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, with Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria, even with Iran itself, and the various terror groups operating in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). However, beyond all these human opponents, we are essentially contending with God.

Have you ever wondered why the provisional government at the time of the foundation of the modern state chose the name Israel? Today it seems self-evident, but in 1948 it was not. Other names were put forward, Judea, Ever (from Ivri, meaning Hebrews), and even Zion, but these were all rejected for various reasons. The name ‘Israel’ was chosen by a process of elimination, and was agreed upon, unenthusiastically, by a vote of 7 to 3 in the people’s administration, the cabinet-in-waiting, less than 48 hours before the declaration of the state (1).

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared statehood saying, “We hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”

I think it was God who guided this decision, and it could not have been more apt. The name Israel was given to Jacob, and all his descendants, because Jacob had wrestled with God and prevailed. The Angel of the LORD then said to Jacob,

“Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

(Genesis 32:28)

This in a nutshell, describes the whole history of the people of Israel. We have always contended against God, rejecting him and his laws over and over again, yet we are still here. We have nearly always known war as the surrounding nations, driven by jealousy, have again and again tried to destroy us. We have prevailed, with the help of God himself. Today it is no different.

The Israeli people are to a great extent living in opposition to God today, spiritually lost, and deeply divided. The religious promote salvation by works, which involve the keeping of a myriad of man-made rules and regulations, and the mindless repetition of prayers and rituals. Most do not know the God they claim to worship. The secular, on the other hand, worship foreign gods, practice occultism and New Age mysticism, or they are caught up in humanistic consumerism and abandoned hedonism. Both the religious and the secular reject the Messiah, the Son of God, who was sent to save us.

Israel is no worse than any other nation in this, but we are to be held to a higher standard, because it was through the people of Israel that the revelation and laws of God came. We of all peoples have no excuse. We should know our own God and should be living in obedience to Him. We should be a light unto the nations. But we are not. We as a people are in rebellion against the LORD God of Israel.

When the people of Israel were about to enter the promised land, after their exodus from Egypt, God laid out to them a series of blessings and curses which are conditional upon Israel’s obedience. He said, “‘Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God...If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit... and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land... I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid... You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you... I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God....” (Leviticus 26).

However, the LORD also goes on to say, “‘But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands... then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength... I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you... If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride ... If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve.... ‘”

These blessings and curses still in effect today, but we as a nation are either ignorant of them or we do not take them seriously. The bottom line is this, if we as a people worship the LORD God of Israel alone and obey Him, we will know prosperity, health and peace, but if we rebel against Him he will remove these blessings and send our enemies against us. Today we are being attacked on every side, even by our so-called friends. We are also being torn apart from within. I believe that God is trying to get our attention and break down our stubborn pride, bringing us to our knees in repentance. What will it take? I fear to think how much worse things must get before we wholeheartedly return to Him.

I have been reading the first chapters of the Book of Isaiah, and it is frightening how similar today’s Israel is to that of Isaiah’s time. When Isaiah prophesied Israel was very far from God, and given over to godless hedonism and idol worship,

“for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down” (Isaiah 5:24-25).

Shortly after Isaiah proclaimed this warning, God called upon the nations, first Assyria and later the Babylonians, to attack Israel and Judah. Both the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were defeated and most of the people were carried off into captivity. Assyria and Babylon were the instrument of God’s wrath.

He lifts up a banner for the distant nations, he whistles for those at the ends of the earth (Isaiah 5: 26).

But woe to those nations who are God’s instrument. Through Isaiah, God warned Assyria thus,

“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger,
    in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation,
    I dispatch him against a people who anger me,
to seize loot and snatch plunder,
    and to trample them down like mud in the streets.

But this is not what he intends,
this is not what he has in mind;
his purpose is to destroy,
to put an end to many nations (Isaiah 10: 5-7)

Even though God raises up nations and armies to chastise Israel, it is not God’s purpose to destroy Israel, but rather to destroy her enemies. God’s purposes have not changed. Today we see modern ‘Assyrians’ in the form of Iran and its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and the various Jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria and the “West Bank”, all rising up with the intention of destroying Israel, but when they will have served God’s purpose, He will bring about their swift destruction,

When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the wilful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes. For he says: ‘By the strength of my hand I have done this... Does the axe raise itself above the person who swings it, or the saw boast against the one who uses it? Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame. The Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame; in a single day it will burn and consume his thorns and his briers.

(Isaiah 10: 12-13, 15-17).

Despite Israel’s repeated rejection of God and his Messiah, God will never totally destroy her. Even though Israel would be defeated and taken into captivity, God promised that she would never be totally destroyed,

They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord’” (Leviticus 26:43-45).

For this reason, we should be looking to God for rescue from our enemies. Only He is faithful and able to solve the issues we face today. Instead we are desperately seeking the support of human beings, the nations we call our friends.

Prior to the Babylonian Exile, God warned Judah about forming an alliance with Egypt, instead of trusting in the LORD God alone. They went ahead anyway and Egypt failed Israel.

“Woe to the obstinate children,”
    declares the Lord,
“to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
    forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit,
    heaping sin upon sin; who go down to Egypt
    without consulting me;
who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection,
    to Egypt’s shade for refuge. But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame,
    Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace.

Isaiah 30:1-3

Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

Isaiah 36:6

This was not an isolated incident. Throughout her history, Israel has made the same mistake again and again. Against the Israelites, Judah made an alliance with Syria (2 Chronicles 16:28), against Syria they turned to the Assyrians (2 Kings 16:7), and now in the passage above we see Judah turning to Egypt against the Assyrians. Again and again, Israel’s allies have failed her.

Are we about to make the same mistake again? Is the USA a ‘broken reed that will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it’? Can we trust the US to support us if we go to a full-scale war against Hezbollah in Lebanon? If we attack the Houthis or Iran itself? Should we put our trust in any human agency or in any weapon we might have? Why is our Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, going even as I write, to the United Nations General Assembly to try and argue Israel’s case, when the vast majority of the nations have already made it crystal clear they are not interested in the truth, nor have they any intention of listening to our side of the story? Are all these negotiations merely a way to avoid turning to God?

Israel, pressured by the USA and other nations, is currently embroiled in endless rounds of hopeless negotiations with enemy factions. All efforts have failed.

How many times has Israel made an agreement with the enemy only to have them break trust? At the end of the 2006 Lebanon War both Israel and Hezbollah agreed to the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 according to which Hezbollah, and other armed militias, were supposed to be disarmed and moved back north of the Litani River, away from the Israeli border. Hezbollah has never honored this agreement. Instead, they have dug in adjacent to the Israeli border and have amassed a massive arsenal of weapons provided by Iran and its allies, for the express purpose of invading and destroying Israel. Since October 8th, our northern communities have been subjected to a daily rain of rockets, missiles and armed drones, numbering over 9,000 in total, they have killed 49 Israelis, wounded 372, destroyed homes, businesses and burned vast areas of forest and scrubland, causing the evacuation and displacement of around 80,000 Israeli civilians.

This morning, I woke to the news that the US and France are trying to broker a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Why? Hezbollah only wants a ceasefire in order to regroup and re-arm, after the crushing blows we have afflicted on them in the past week or so. Why would Israel allow that? I can only surmise that the Biden administration is trying to push this on Israel for their own political interests.

In Gaza, how many times have Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire only to have us ‘cease’, while they continue to ‘fire’? Even in the November hostage deal, Hamas broke the agreement by not releasing all those they had agreed to release.

It is clear to me that Hamas and Hezbollah are not interested in peace, or a ‘two-state’ solution. Their clearly stated aim is only the complete annihilation of the ‘Zionist State’ (Israel), which they will not even name much less recognize as legitimate. They will settle for nothing less than to push Israel from ‘the River to the Sea’, which would amount to genocide. I no longer believe in the possibility of a two-state solution, after all, we tried that with Gaza and look where it got us.

So, why are we persevering with this charade of negotiations, which drag on and on? Surely, we should stop trying to deal with powerless humans, or indeed Satan himself, and turn, as a nation, to our God, the God of Israel, and to Him alone. Why have we not done so?

Modern day Israel was founded upon secular humanistic principles. Consequently, even though many of our leaders claim to be ‘religious’, they have not publicly called upon the people of Israel to repent and call out to God for deliverance, nor do they even acknowledge how God has so often protected us miraculously and given us military victories.

Of course, there are individuals who are doing so, but what is needed is a national repentance and recognition of the God of Israel, YHWH, and a national call to prayer and fasting.

Instead, our national labor union, the Histadrut, recently called for a national strike in order to bring down the current government. Thankfully this strike was a dismal failure and succeeded only in further damaging our economy. Additionally, tens of thousands are out on the streets almost daily demonstrating against the government and calling for them to sign a deal with Hamas. These moves are not only divisive but are playing into the hands of the enemy.

Last week the German news outlet ‘Bild’ published an illegally leaked Hamas document which was reportedly found on a computer that belonged to the Hamas leader Yahyah Sinwar, and which outlined their policy of psychological warfare against Israel (2). It has been claimed by the IDF that it was not an official document nor signed by Sinwar, but rather some suggestions put to him by mid-level officials. Nevertheless, it does reveal the mentality and provides evidence of their strategy. The document lays out a strategy of psychological warfare using the plight of the hostages to “continue to exert psychological pressure on the families of the [hostages], both now and in the first phase [of the ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government increases.”

Hamas has cynically participated in negotiations even though it has no intention of reaching any agreement which would set all the hostages free. After all, why would they release all the hostages? They need them as human shields and ‘bargaining chips’. For Hamas, it would amount to an admission of defeat and surrender. The negotiations are merely a strategy to drag out the process to grind down Israel’s military forces in a war of attrition. Furthermore, they are cynically using the plight of the hostages, and their families, to divide Israeli society in an attempt to bring down the current government, which is taking a hard line against them. At the same time they are using their own Gazan population as human shields, not caring how many are killed, or how much their people suffer, while inflating the figures of the dead, in order to promote their propaganda war and turn the world against Israel.

Should we even consider making a deal with Hamas or Hezbollah, Jihadi terror organizations motivated by Satan himself, the Father of Lies? Should we make any pact with the Devil?

When in Babylonian Exile the people of Israel were threatened with annihilation, the people of Israel called a three-day period of prayer and fasting, after which God rescued Israel. Why have our leaders not done the same today? And would the people of Israel respond? I fear not. We have wandered very far from God and our ‘shepherds’ are blind. How sad that we reject our only hope; and do not cry out with the words of King David,

You have rejected us, God, and burst upon us;
you have been angry—now restore us!
You have shaken the land and torn it open;
mend its fractures, for it is quaking...

Give us aid against the enemy,
for human help is worthless.
With God we will gain the victory,
and he will trample down our enemies. (Psalm 60 : 1-2, 11-12)

Many in Israel today are calling out to God for help, but that is not enough. We must also seek to know God, humble ourselves and repent. God said, “ if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7 : 14).

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