The surprise attack on Israel by Hamas from Gaza snapped our collective heads back to the reality that this tiny nation the size of New Jersey will be the final resting place of all world history. How appropriate and true are the words of the Psalmist.
They have said, “Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more.” For they have conspired together with one mind; against You they make a covenant. Psalm 83:4-5
While all the nations rattle their swords against her, and in some cases act out in the most hideous and reprehensible of ways, yet it is God with whom they contest and must answer. Would that He break his silence and strike back, we pray!
God, do not remain quiet; do not be silent and, O God, do not be still. For behold, Your enemies make an uproar, and those who hate You have exalted themselves. Psalm 83:1-2
But he has in a sense done that by rebirthing the nation in 1948, which since then has staunchly and supernaturally withstood the hoards around them, a siege to end all sieges!
Amazingly, over these many hundreds of years since Abraham, Israel remains the central focus of the world. The antagonists remain the descendants of Esau, Ishmael, and Lot, and other wayward souls.
The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites; Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria also has joined with them; they have become a help to the children of Lot. Psalm 83:6-8
They may have all assembled against the nation yet again on seven fronts, saying, “Let us possess for ourselves the pastures of God,” (Psalm 83:12) but it will turn out no different. As has been accounted for in Scripture, they keep coming after them despite the constant beat downs delivered by the Almighty through the likes of Deborah and Gideon and David. As the Psalmist predicts, they all will again become “as dung for the ground,” and be reduced to “whirling dust, like chaff before the wind (Psalm 83:10, 13).
Those of us who are riveted on Israel as the focal point for the Lord’s return, and pray for its deliverance in more ways than one, with anxious anticipation seeing current events through the same lens as the Psalmist, possess this attitude toward the nation’s enemies, and rightfully so.
Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever, and let them be humiliated and perish, that they may know that You alone, whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth. Psalm 83:17–18
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