Nuggets from "Judgment Day: Islam, Israel, and the Nations" by Dave Hunt

Nuggets from “Judgment Day: Islam, Israel, and the Nations” by Dave Hunt

Both God’s blessings and judgments upon Israel throughout her history reveal His character: He is loving, kind, faithful, and true, but He will not leave rebellion unpunished, and He will not go back on His promises, whether for blessing or for judgment. Israel is a picture of all of mankind. Her history shows that God knows our weaknesses and is willing to pardon. But it also shows that, like Israel, we are all by nature stubborn rebels, proud, selfish, self-willed, determined to take our own way, and that God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness must be tempered with His justice. From out of the fire of His presence that was blazing atop Mount Sinai, God thundered the Ten Commandments in a terrifyingly majestic voice that all Israel audibly heard – yet, incredibly, they did not obey!

As they well might, the people trembled before this awesome display of God’s presence and power. No fiction writer would have imagined, much less dared to write, the unbelievable rebellion that Scripture tells us occurred next. One of the many evidences that the Bible is the true Word of God lies in the fact that, in giving us man’s history from the Garden of Eden through the flood and onward, it spells out the evil in the heart even of those whom God graciously blesses – and nowhere more clearly than at Mount Sinai. Astonishing though it seems, in spite of this audible and visible proof of exactly who the true God was – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel, who had delivered them miraculously through the Red Sea on dry ground, drowning the pursuing Egyptians behind them. He had led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, fed them daily with manna, and quenched their thirst with water miraculously flowing from a rock. Yet while Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law from God, the people below broke the very commandments they had promised to keep, having just heard them audibly spoken out of the fire and lightning, where Moses lingered above (Exodus:32:1-14 [1] And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. [2] And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. [3] And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. [4] And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. [5] And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD. [6] And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. [7] And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: [8] They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. [9] And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: [10] Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. [11] And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? [12] Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. [13] Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. [14] And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
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God was testing Moses with the offer of having his descendants replace the twelve tribes of Israel. That was a great temptation – and Moses passed the test. He reminded God of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – promises that He must fulfill to maintain His integrity. If He failed to establish their descendants as a nation in the land He had promised to them, the other nations would say, with good reason, that He was not the true God.

The same holds true today. The God of the Bible must fulfill His promises of ultimately restoring Israel as a nation in her own land once more, never to be scattered again – or He is a liar and not the true God and Creator.

We well know the tragic story. When Moses returned to the camp of Israel and saw with his own eyes the idolatry and fornication that the people had fallen into at the very base of Sinai, he angrily smashed to the ground the tables of stone on which God had written His commandments. And why not? The people had already broken the law. What an incredible and yet instructive story, revealing the human heart!