GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War

God Uses Nations

How God Does Things

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God…(Deut 29:29, NKJV)

You’ve probably heard that God works in mysterious ways, and it is true to a point. He does explain hard things, but we shouldn’t just dismiss His ways just because we don’t comprehend them. Mostly we just need to dig a little deeper into the Bible to figure out them and when it comes to why God uses ungodly nations to judge others when these nations should be judged themselves, well people scratch their heads. And when God uses Israel to judge other nations when they are far from serving Him, things get even more difficult to unravel. But it doesn’t have to be that hard, even now where Israel is pretty much backslidden and yet He is going to use her to, in my mind setup Bible prophecies both now and in the future. So let’s take a look at how God works with nations and wars in the Bible so we can get a feel for the pattern.

A Wicked Leader

More times than not, a nation is judged not because the people are wicked, but because their ruler is as we see in an article from gotquestions.org:

Sometimes in biblical history, an entire kingdom seems to be judged for the actions of one wicked king. For example, 2 Chronicles 28:19 says, in part, “The LORD had humbled Judah because of Ahaz king of Israel.” How is it fair that all of Judah was judged because of King Ahaz’s transgression?

To understand that question we need more background:

The full story is that the kings in these accounts were not the only sinful people in the nation. To continue 2 Chronicles 28:19, the verse also says, “For he had promoted wickedness in Judah and had been most unfaithful to the LORD.” Thus, both King Ahaz and the people of Judah were involved in sinful actions, including idolatry. Ahaz had been the promoter and facilitator of the sin, but the whole nation stood guilty of committing the sin. When judgment on a nation was pronounced, it was typically addressed to the king. As the ruler of the nation he was held responsible for the actions of his people.

So it starts with an ungodly leader who then promotes wickedness and the nation follows him. But it went the other way, too:

When a good king arose, we find that his noble actions also influenced the people he led. For example, during the reign of good King Asa of Judah, Asa “deposed his grandmother Maakah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive image for the worship of Asherah. Asa cut it down, broke it up and burned it in the Kidron Valley” (2 Chronicles 15:16). He led the nation toward righteousness and was rewarded with no war for many years (verses 18–19).

As for Israel, God warned her about turning away from Him and how He would judge her:

God’s Law given through Moses promised judgment upon Israel and its king when it turned against God. Deuteronomy 28:36–37 says that, if Israel would not keep the commandments, “the Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. . . . You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.” God warned of this punishment beforehand and then sent prophets to remind the kings when they did wrong; only after a king and his people clearly rejected God’s ways did judgment come upon them.

He Warns Before He Judges

Note that God would notify them before judging them. Then it was up to the kings to do something:

The kings of Judah and Israel had the ability to encourage or stop idol worship and other sinful actions among the people they led. When the kings encouraged sin, they brought judgment upon their people. Further, when the king lived in sin, the people had a responsibility to oppose him. However, in the biblical cases of judgment against Israel’s evil kings, the people were involved in disobedience as well.

Overall, God looked at all the circumstances in His decision to judge:

In short, the king’s actions were not the only determining factor in God’s decision to judge the nation; it is more accurate to say that God’s judgment came because of the evil actions of the nation—actions promoted by the king.

In all of this God’s intentions are not to angrily kill those who disagree with Him. His will is to bring people to repentance and always will be:

God’s judgment was intended to cause His people to return to Him and call out in repentance. God’s judgment was not permanent, either. He returned the Israelites to Jerusalem after seventy years of captivity in Babylon, offering yet another example of His faithfulness to His promises.

Another good example of this process is when Jonah went to Niniveh to give them 40 days to repent and they did. God withheld judgment because they decided to change their ways. Sadly, Assyria went back to their ungodly ways and God used another nation to judge them, in this case the Medes. Which then gave way to the Babylonian kingdom which God would eventually use to judge Israel and take them captive for 70 years.

The Pattern Continues Even Today

Over and over again God raises up nations and armies as His judging instruments. A recent one was when God used Great Britain and the United States to stop Hitler and judge Germany for killing 6 million Jews. Now it wasn’t that simple, but you see how it works. And right now the terrorists in the Middle East are, in my view going to be judged by God and He is using the wayward nation of Israel to do it. Your mileage may vary on this, however this is at least one reason why I say God is on Israel’s side now. I see how He is moving the chess pieces to finally take the teeth out of the mouths of these nations and peoples who have vowed to wipe Israel off the map. And as I have previously written here, His goal is to not bless a people that are far from Him now, but to both use them to judge a vicious people who hate Jews and those that support them and to bring Israelis back to the God of their fathers. Unfortunately they will come away from this coming victory and be prideful and leaning on their own strength, however this will setup the next war against Israel which only God will rescue them from. The hearts of the Jews will turn back to Him eventually as we read in Bible prophecy. And it will take the armies of the Antichrist to come after them to do it then. It will be a global hatred and attack, something these Jews will not be able to fight against without His intervention. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem both now and for the future. They’re going to need it.