Change is necessary, often helpful, and sometimes stressful. Moving into a new home. Starting school. Getting married. Becoming widowed. Being fired. Being hired. Facing a change in pastor at your church or boss in your office. Changes of health are particularly worrisome. We’re told we must change with the times, but what if the times are changing for the worse? We feel like Job: “Changes and war are ever with me.”

If you feel that way today, change the subject in your mind and turn toward God’s Word: “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6). “[The heavens] will perish, but You remain… like a cloak You will fold them up, and they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not fail” (Hebrews 1:11-12). “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

When change comes into your life, cling to your unchanging God. Focus on His steady, fixed, inalterable, invariable love, grace, power, holiness, and infinite nature.

One Donna and I are happy to be here for this historic occasion honoring the nation of Israel.
listening to everything that I have heard tonight. I wonder if I
am not the missing link in bringing these 2 entities together.
I am a conservative southern baptist preacher, and my name is David Paul Jeremiah.
740
years before the birth of Jesus Isaiah wrote these words.
Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?
Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day?
or shall a nation be born at once?
As we gather here tonight, Israel is about to celebrate her 70th anniversary as a nation.
And what amazes many people is that in those 7 decades, this tiny nation with a population of 8 point 5000000 people, has become the geopolitical center of the world.
Why is this so?
Why is this fledgling country with a total land space that is smaller than New Jersey?
mentioned in the nightly news more than any other nation except the United States.
For answers to that, we do not turn to the nightly news or the daily newspaper.
We turn to the bible, and you have not gone far into the Bible before you discovered that something very unique is going on.
The story of Israel begins at the very beginning.
It is in the very proportion of the coverage with which the book of Genesis tells its story.
Only two chapters are given to the whole story of creation.
One chapter records the fall of man.
8 chapters cover the 1000 years from creation to the time of Abraham.
and then 38 chapters deal with the life stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Progenitors of the Jewish race.
Apparently, god finds Abraham and the Jewish people to be of enormous importance.
The almighty god of heaven and earth made a binding covenant with Abraham.
It’s been referred to on occasion this evening.
But I would like to read it in its totality, and I’d like for you to follow along as we put the words on the screen.
Now the lord had said to Abraham, get out of your country, from your family, from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great.
and you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him, who curses you, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Notice that god’s covenant with Abraham consists of 4 unconditional promises.
First, god promised to bless Abraham, and that promise has been lavishly kept.
Abraham has been blessed in many ways for 1000 years.
The very name of Abraham has been revered by Jews Christians and Muslims.
a significant portion of the world’s population.
But Abraham has also been blessed through the gifts God gave to his descendants, the Jews.
That point is dramatically illustrated in so many ways, but I’ve chosen just one.
It is illustrated by the disproportionate number of Nobel prizes awarded to the Jewish people.
From 1901 to
2017,
approximately 900 Nobel Prizes have been given to individuals in recognition of significant contributions to mankind.
Of that total, at least 195 have been awarded to Jews. of the
7,600,000,000
inhabitants of the world, about 15,000,000 are Jewish.
less than 1 quarter of 1% of the total world population.
That miniscule percentage of the population has won 22% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to date.
It’s an amazing thing, especially when you see it graphically.
The Israelis like to tell a joke about a Jew who began to read only air of newspapers.
A puzzled friend asked him one day why.
He said, well, I read all the Israeli papers, and all I find is bad news about us, how we are vulnerable to terrorism and attack, problems with Palestinian settlements, political turmoil, growing isolation, But the Arab papers tell nothing but good news about us.
They constantly claim we’re all rich, successful, and that we rule the world.
These Arab newspapers may see Israel’s wealth as material corruption, but they are spot on in terms of how god has blessed this nation.
Did you
know that the Tel Aviv stock market lists
616
companies, meaning that Israel has one public company for every 12,500 citizens.
That might not mean anything to you, but America has one public company for every
47,000
citizens. And for a nation of just over 8 million people, Israel generates about 500 start ups every year.
more than every other country in the world except the United States.
By comparison, the entire continent of Europe with a population of some 700,000,000 people produces only 600 to 700 startup companies each year.
Israel produces
500.
Israel is the home too. many billionaires and millionaires.
It is a land that has richly been blessed.
The prosperity of today’s Israel is beyond question. God has blessed this nation. You cannot go there.
You cannot ride through the nation.
You cannot see what has happened there, especially if you have any kind of perspective of having gone there earlier and then going back later it’s almost like, how could all of this have happened in just such a short time?
God’s promise to bless Israel has been without question, fulfilled.
And God promised to bring out of Abraham a great nation.
Currently, nearly 6,400,000 Jews live in Israel. Another 6,000,000 live in the United States.
there’s a significant Jewish population that remains scattered throughout the world.
Add to these present figures, all the descendants of Abraham who have lived throughout history, and what you have is uncountable, and it’s in it’s a promise that God has fulfilled.
They are as numerous as the nighttime stars. And god promised to make Abraham a blessing to many.
That promise has been spectacularly kept Just think of what the world would be without the Jews.
Without them, we would have no bible. Without them, we would have no Jesus.
Without the Jewish Jesus, there would be no Christianity.
Without the Jews, there would be no 10 commandments, the law that has largely been the basis of jurisprudence and statutory proceedings among most of the civilized nations of the world.
And god forth promised to bless those who blessed Israel. and curse those who cursed her.
And he has kept that promise faithfully.
No nation in history has blessed Israel like the United States of America.
And no nation has been as blessed as the United States of America.
To this day, the issue of who controls this land called the promised land.
is most volatile in international politics, but we who know the Bible stand back and we don’t worry.
because we know the right to the promised lands already been determined by the only one who has the authority to determine it.
The land is called holy.
It’s the holy land because it belongs to God, and the bible tells us that the earth is
the lord’s to do with as he wills
in his covenant with Abraham, God designated who would control this land.
He gave it to Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel.
and the bible tells us that his choice of Israel had nothing to do with Israel’s merit.
In fact, if you read the scriptures carefully, the bible goes out of its way to demonstrate that.
It was not because Israel was more numerous than other people in the world, for she was the very least, according to deuteronomy
77.
It was not because Israel was more sensitive to god than other nations.
Although god called her by name, Israel did not know god, Isaiah
45 4.
It was not because Israel was more righteous than other nations.
When god confirmed his promise to the Jews, he reminded them that they were a rebellious stiff necked people.
So if god chose to bless the nation of Israel, not because she was more populous or more spiritual responsive, or more righteous, why did he choose the Jews?
Why did he choose them? And before I give you the answer, I wanna tell you a story.
For the last 30 years, Don and I have had the joy of taking people to Israel on tours.
Our last trip was in April of
2016,
and we had about 700 people with us.
For all of you who go to Israel, that translates into 14 busloads of people circulating around that little land.
When we were in the process of going there and after we arrived, I was told that there weren’t any hotels large enough to take care of our whole group in the Galilee area.
And then they told me that some of us, including Donna and I, would be staying in a city called Herzolia, and the rest would be staying in Tiberias.
all well and good. But then they told me that the distance between the two cities was eighty miles and that I had to speak to both groups on the 1st night.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, but I was told that we would drive from Herzulia up to Tiberia where I would speak to the people there, and then we would get on a helicopter and fly back
to Herzilla to address the people there.
Now, I’m a pretty brave dude, and I don’t have a spirit of fear.
But I’m gonna tell you when you go to Israel, you think about life a bit differently than when you stay here.
I used to have a guy come and talk to our people about going Israel and try to comfort them about that in his punchline was, it’s as close to heaven from Israel as it is from the United States.
Now, I’m not really sure that helped any of us.
But when you go to Israel, there’s
a sense that it’s a different situation. I’ve never felt afraid. I’ve always felt very safe there.
I mean, everywhere you look, somebody’s ready to take somebody out if they don’t do right.
But flying over Israel at night in a helicopter, Well, we drove to Tiberias, we did our event there, and then 3 of us Steve Dick, myself, Charles Billingsley, headed toward what I thought was the airport.
But I didn’t see any signs of any airport anywhere we drove.
In fact, we didn’t stay on the paved roads.
We were bumping around, and I’m wondering what in the world are we doing, and what have I agreed to do here?
There was no side of any helicopter, and then the driver said, see over in the corner?
I looked over in the corner of this field and I could see a penlight being held up.
And there was a helicopter sitting in the corner of this field, and that was our ride back to Herzilla, and my heart started the pound.
We got
out of the car and walked toward
the helicopter, and the pilot walked over, and he said to me, are you David Jeremiah?
And I said, yes, sir. You sit in front, he said. Oh, come on, man.
What what are you talking about? I got in the front, there were still no lights.
There were no lights on the helicopter until we were airborne, and then the lights did come on, and what happened in the next 30 minutes, I will never forget.
We flew over Israel at 1200 feet. and saw the holy land from God’s perspective.
And I remembered this verse that answers the question I posed a few moments ago from the book that KR Thur told me she’s been reading lately, the book of deuteronomy.
a land the land of Israel for which the lord your god cares, the eyes of the lord your god are always on it from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.
The answer to the question, why did God choose the Jews is that it was his sovereign purpose to do it.
His sovereign purpose means he cares what happens to the people and to their land.
He is not merely a passive observer. He didn’t just make the decision and then go do something else.
The Bible says every day every hour of every day over the entire surface of the land of Israel, almighty God is watching.
Some have suggested that the promise that God made of land to Abraham’s descendants is not to be taken.
Literally, I hear a lot of that these days.
They say it’s merely a symbol that indicates a general blessing.
Some people say that his promise of land is simply the promise of heaven.
But the bible is way too specific to let us get by with any such vagueness.
The bible describes the land definite terms, and it outlines it with clear geographical boundaries.
Doctor John Walvert said this when he wrote these words.
He said the term land used in the bible means exactly what it says.
It’s not talking about heaven, it is talking about a piece of real estate in the Middle East.
and then Walward, who’s not really funny, but once in a while, says something rather humorous.
He said, if all God was promising, Abraham was heaven, he should have stayed in the early counties.
Why go on this long journey? Why be a pilgrim and a wanderer? No. God didn’t say it was heaven.
He said it was a land.
And the land promised to Abraham, takes in much more area than the present nation of Israel occupies.
When I show them this little this little slide that I’m gonna show people, y’all tonight, people are always surprised.
Israel everybody’s fighting over here gets to control Israel.
If they only knew how much land God really gave Israel, they’d probably maybe lead them alone and hope they don’t get stirred up and go take some more land that they own.
But look at this slide. Notice
on this slide, the little sliver of Israel and the outline of all of the land Genesis 17 says this way, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you and I will give you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession and I will be your Abraham and his descendants, the land of Canaan as their possession in perpetuity.
When you look at the map and locate that tiny strip of land, Israel now claims as hers.
You can see that she does not now nor has she ever fully occupied the land that was described.
to Abraham in God’s covenant promise.
If Israel were currently occupying all the land promised to her, she would control all the holdings of present day Israel, Lebanon, the West Bank of Jordan, and substantial portions of Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and that will never happen until the millennium.
But one day, Israel will occupy all the land that the lord god has given her and the king himself will be in charge.
Whenever you talk about Israel and the Jewish people, you always are on miracle ground.
Everything about this is miraculous.
Gary Fraser, who’s written a lot in the area of prophecy once wrote, he said, you can’t find the ancient neighbors of the Jews anywhere?
Have you ever met a Moabite? Do you know any hittites?
Are there any tours to visit the ammonites?
Can you find the postal code of a single edomite No.
These ancient peoples disappeared from history and from the face of the earth, yet the Jews, just as god promised, returned to their land.
And today we see this prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes.
In fact, back in 2006 for the first time in 1900 years, Israel became home to the largest Jewish community in the world, surpassing the Jewish population in the United States.
from the meager 650,000 who returned when the Jewish state was founded in
1948.
The Jewish population of Israel has swelled to approximately
6,400,000.
God’s promise and the prophecies of his word are overwhelmingly challenging us place Israel in the center of our prayers, of our purposes, and of our protection.
Before I say my final word tonight, I wanna tell you a story about another miracle in Israel that most people I do not know about.
In fact, I’ll have to honestly tell you I didn’t know about this until I took my last trip to Israel in
2016.
My wife was told by her friend, I think Ruth Vic told her this, that there was a there was a street in Jerusalem.
where there was good shopping. And we Steve and I have learned to be very sensitive to those terms when they come up, so we listened.
the name of the street was Ben Yahuda Street.
I had never been there, but I had agreed to go.
So I went to Ben Yahuda Street, and when I go on a shopping tour, my main thing is to find a place to sit down and wait till it’s over.
So I was seated there and and I looked up at that street and I thought,
I wonder who in the world
Benyahuda is. I mean, what did he do?
How did he get his name on a street sign in Downtown Jerusalem.
And so I asked one of the tour guides who was with us, and he said, look, I’ll bring you a book tonight, and you can read about it.
So he did. He brought me a book on Eliezer Ben Yahuda, I became interested in this story because I saw a sign and this book captured my ten I couldn’t put it down.
It read like a modern day novel or
mystery. The book was written by a
man named Saint John. And in this book, he tells the story of this remarkable man.
St John said that this was a story of a man who made enemies of his best friends.
who went to prison for his beliefs, was always on the verge of death from tuberculosis.
Yet, fathered 11 children, gathered the material for a sick teen volume dictionary unlike any other Philological work ever conceived, and he died while he was working on the word soul.
Ben Yahuda, devoted his life to the restoration of the Hebrew language to the Jewish people.
Everyone who knows about the stability of Israel today knows it’s wrapped up in 2 things, not just the land, but the land and the language.
For 41 years, Eleazer Benjohuda lived for nothing else Every morning, he got up with only one purpose, and that is to discover another Hebrew word that had been lost and recover it for his dictionaries that he was creating.
The story of his total dedication in accomplishing his vision is the definition of the word endurance.
Because of him, the Jewish people no longer speak a 150 languages. Their national tongue is an unbroken circle.
the national language of the state of Israel is Hebrew.
When he started to work on this project, it was during the Ottoman Empire, and he was public enemy number 1, he spent many years in jail.
And at that time, Hebrew was spoken only in religious content.
It had not been used in daily life for 2000 years.
But he lived to see the day when virtually every Jew in his country wrote on their census form under mother tongue, the word Hebrew.
He lived to see the day when Hebrew was the language of the courts, the theater, of business society and public affairs.
And during the 41 years, he had struggled to bring this about.
He’d often been called a fool and a fanatic.
after his death, a eulogist added one word to that epitaph, and this is what it read.
Here lies Eliezer Benjahuda, faithful, fanatic.
I remember when I read that not having anything to do with this language.
I just thought that would
be a pretty cool goal
to have for your life. to be a faithful fanatic.
And they never realized that what he did was connected to a prophecy.
Until one day, I was reading in the minor prophet of Zephaniah.
And this is what I read.
For then, I will restore to the people a pure language that they all may call on the name of the lord to serve him with 1 accord.
God used that faithful fanatic to become the fulfillment of Zephaniah’s prophecy.
So today when you go to Israel, yes, there’s a beautiful land there.
But when you go to Israel, you just listen carefully.
You’ll hear people speaking the beautiful language we call Hebrew.
It’s taken me a long time to appreciate that because I took Hebrew in seminary, and it’s about killing me.
But Hebrew in Israel is different than Hebrew in seminary.
Hebrew and Israel is the beautiful language of the people of God.
What a what a thrill it is for us together here in this place and hold up this nation, this prophetic nation, this God breathed nation with our prayers and our support.
I’m honored to be a part of the NRB as we stand together with our friends in Israel.
Let’s stand together, shall we?
father god, we thank you for the history of redemption.
We thank you that we have this book we call the Bible, which tells the
story of your love for us.
And, lord, the gospel which you tell us is to the Jew first and then to the gentile.
We thank you for all the work that is being done in that nation, and we thank you for the many men that I have met and others have met who Not only are faithful Jews, but they’re faithful teachers of the word of god.
And they pastor evangelical churches, most of them not very large, but faithfully week after week they declare to the people of that land that the Messiah has come and that he is available to all who will receive him.
tonight, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
We pray for the progress of the gospel in Jerusalem.
We pray for the protection of between our 2 nations.
And may the god who has blessed this land, help us to understand that our blessing is conditioned upon how we treat that little sliver of a nation about which we have spoken tonight.
And so we pray lord god that you will bless Israel. and you will bless America.
And bless us tonight as we think these thoughts.
and we pray in the matchless name of our redeemer and savior and coming messiah, the lord Jesus Christ.
Amen. Amen.