Peace in the Middle East

Isaiah is one of my favorite books of the Bible to read devotionally. Someday, I might get the courage to preach it. To preach it effectively, one needs a good understanding of all of Scripture as well as an understanding of the time in which Isaiah wrote. Then, you have to be able to communicate all of that to a modern audience that does not know much about Bible and essentially nothing of Isaiah’s time. Someday….Maybe.

Back to my point. I was reading Isaiah and came across these verses:

Isaiah 19:23-25 ²³ In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. ²⁴ In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. ²⁵ The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance."

In our day with so much tension in the Middle East, with all of our fears of Islamic extremists, terrorists, and the potential for regional conflicts to escalate into global war, these verses give us tremendous hope. One day, God will call Egypt my people, Assyria (which is basically Iraq) my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance. One day, all the nations will bow the knee to Jesus Christ.

Our world is not hopeless. There is no reason to give in to despair. God has promised that all the nations will stream to His holy mountain and one day, we will all beat our swords into plowshares. But, what will bring about that unity is not imagining that our differences do not exist, or taking up the banner of pacifism, or even the swords of war. Rather, peace will come when the kingdom of God comes in all its fullness.

Isaac Watts put it this way:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

Until then, we will continue to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” We also will continue in our mission of announcing this great kingdom of Jesus. We will invite all people every where to revoke their allegiance to whatever kingdom they are serving and become citizens and heirs of the kingdom of heaven.