Praying in Times of War

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve and ChatGPT

Most of you have seen video clips and are aware of all the things happening in the Middle East. And obviously, as believers, we have a responsibility to pray for the people in Israel, right? Where I think we see that in scripture, to pray for Israel, but also for all the people that are impacted in the Middle East.

And I don’t know why all week, I just had such a burden. I had just been emotional all week and the whole thing just impacted me as I see the videos. You know, both on my, think about the Israeli families and the terror that they experience. But then you also see now what’s happening in Gaza. Obviously, families trying to leave that area. And so you just ponder. It’s like, okay, because if you have walked in the West Bank, if you’ve been in that area, or if you’ve been in—I haven’t been to Gaza, but if it’s the same as the West Bank area, there’s a lot of poverty. They don’t have a lot of the resources that we have.

If the government now suddenly tells us like, “Hey, pack up your bags and go. Leave your house,” you maybe have cabins and we have resources to do it, but that is not always true for the people in the West Bank. And definitely probably not true for a lot of people in Gaza.

And so just the whole week I was thinking about, like when you know that the war is coming and you know a lot of blood will be spilled probably in the next several weeks and just how that impacts a lot of innocent people. Those are hard things to think through. And so, just the whole week been trying to figure out how do we think through some of these things from a biblical perspective and not just from a worldly perspective and out of reaction. And I don’t know that I have all of the right answers for you this morning, but I just want to share some things with you and you might not even agree with me and that’s okay, that’s fine too.

But just want to share with you this passage, Romans chapter 12 verse 13 to 17. It says, “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need, practice hospitality.” And then this is kind of the part, it says, “Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.”

And so just kind of reading this passage, and obviously we have to always do this in context of that particular passage. And then in SAGE group we are reading, working through the Sermon on the Mount, which is the longest sermon that Jesus was preaching as a quite important sermon. And in our SAGE group we’re working through the eight beatitudes. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read through those, a lot of times we even read through those and we actually have no idea what it actually means. Because it is quite challenging to just kind of read through it when you read words like meekness. What does that mean? Blessed those that are meek? Does that mean I gotta be weak, right? And so kind of just studying through some of those things. And when we ponder what it means to be a believer, a lot of stuff is kind of upside down. And it’s usually a lot of times it’s quite the opposite of the way that we will do things in the natural.

And so just trying to put all of this stuff together and say, “okay God,” and even in just doing a wedding Friday night and the couple was sharing their vows and I was like, “Man, that is so pretty.” And I was thinking about the beauty of marriage. And when we stay to our vows, that’s beautiful. And then I was thinking about just when people divorce and we don’t stay to our vows, right? Then there’s kind of just sometimes a lot of hurt and messiness that creeps in. Praise the Lord, the Lord can redeem all things.

But pondering all of this, I was just thinking, I was like, “Man, it is truly hard to live out the Bible.” It is hard. And then I realized in how many of these areas do I fail? The cool thing is that it forces me to go back on my knees and just like, “Lord, I’m a sinner. I’m in desperate need of you and the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. And you still have a lot of work to be done in my life.” And I’m grateful that He has continued to working through stuff out in my life and that hopefully I can represent Him better every day. And yet we fail.

But just even looking about, you know, I said we gotta think about this in context, but our natural response, when you think, if 9/11, like our natural response is like, “Okay, we gotta go to war, we gotta take revenge.” And in the natural, I can see this with Israel. And I don’t blame them if I was in their position from a human perspective, absolutely. We would have probably done the same thing. I was like, “Man, sign me up. I’m going to war.”

When you see those images and the terror, those are hard images. When you read about what happened to the babies and the different things, but you do realize again, man, we have a battle and that there’s evil in this world.

When you listen to interviews and some of the things that maybe went on in Israel, from what I can gather in my limited perspective, two things maybe, one is—well, three things. One, it was kind of their… some of their religious ceremonies, right, a day of rest and celebration. So it’s kind of Christmas. Nobody wants to think, you know, in a sense, when you’re in Christmas, you think gifts, you don’t think war or terrorists is gonna come in and attack, right? That’s one.

Israel is really known for their intelligence on military. And I think there’s maybe been some pride there, maybe. I don’t know about like, “man, we’ve got this. We’re on top of things.” And then even when you think about some of their military technology, we hear about the Iron Dome. And then you maybe put your trust in all of these externals to keep you safe until it doesn’t. And then you grieve and see the stuff that just happened.

And so just even this morning, I was pondering that and it was like the Holy Spirit was just talking to me, I think in that moment of just like, even for us, when we think go back to 9/11, right, then everyone is going to church. There’s an urgency. It seems like there’s a spiritual awakening because we just experienced all of this trauma and terror, right? And we’re trying to make sense of it. And then we just fall back. Now there’s kind of, it’s peaceful. We feel safe, especially in Duluth. It’s like, “Man, how can we not feel blessed and safe?” Right? It’s like, at least in the summer for that two weeks in the summer, we feel like we’re on vacation the whole time. It’s like people from the cities are coming to Duluth to come and have vacation here. How cool is that? Venessa and I drove on the North Shore yesterday and it was just beautiful and the colors, and we had a nice cup of coffee, and in Two Harbors, it’s like, “Man, we are spoiled.” Until that first snow flies, then it’s like, “Okay, Lord, again, I’m hearing the call to Hawaii.”

But it’s easy for us to feel safe, but it’s a dangerous place as well. And I think it can be dangerous in the sense of our faith and to become complacent and lose sight of the urgency, to say, “What does it mean as a church,” to have this awareness and say, “Man, terror is out there.” When we peel back all the layers, I believe, from what is going on in our world, you will find Satan truly behind all of that. Now that seems simple, but I really believe it. Because again, when you think about John, it reminds us that Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy.

And we saw it this week and we see it, what is happening in Europe. And we see some of that stuff in the US and how Satan wants to divide and how he wants to divide churches and divide people and just the killing and just the hatred. And at the end of the day, I just want you to know that we are dealing—when we think about scriptures and Ephesians—we are dealing with demonic forces.

And Scripture reminds us that our battle is not against what? Flesh and blood, but against what? Principalities, right? And so again, it is so easy, I think to say, “Okay, Israel is the good guys,” and suddenly we have a hatred, or we think every person that’s in Gaza or in the Middle East, Palestine, are evil. And like this immediately, kind of just as we look at media and stuff, that turns our hearts against some of these other people.

And at the end of the day, we are called to love people. It’s the same thing that I’m just seeing now. Maybe you’ve seen some of the craziness in Harvard and some of the things that’s happening in our nation and kind of the dividing line. And we’re doing the same thing, kind of what we did to Black Lives Matter and all of those things. As believers, we don’t have the luxury to say black lives matter, white lives matter. If we’re Christians, every life matters. And that includes babies. Doesn’t matter your color. Doesn’t matter if you’re from South Africa or Palestine. Your life matters in the eyes of God. And at the end of the day, God has a plan and purpose for every individual. God has a plan and a purpose for your life. He’s got a plan and a purpose for every person that is stuck right now in Palestine. He’s got a plan and a purpose for every Jew and the stuff that they’re dealing with, right? God is not going, “Okay, yep, I like you. Nope, I don’t like you.” That is not a biblical view and philosophy to have.

And so all of this nonsense of where we think we have to like this group and don’t like this group, that’s gotta stop. Because at the end of the day, God tells us even when we read through John, the new commandment, it is “Love God, love people.” Love God, love people. Now, when you have—I’ve had time to spend some time in the West Bank and Palestine, I’m just giving you a different perspective maybe. And again, I’m pro-Israel, we’re gonna pray for Israel, but there’s maybe some stuff that we don’t always think about. I’ve got some really good friends in Bethlehem. So Bethlehem is in the West Bank. When you look at the whole region, it is surrounded by a wall, right? When you’re a Palestinian, you don’t have easy access to go into Jerusalem. It takes special papers. A lot of stuff is controlled by Israel. And so I gotta say this, some of the things that the Palestinians in the West Bank are experiencing is really from a non-biblical perspective on the Jewish people’s side.

Now, some of you might not understand it, some of you might not agree with me. It’s the same thing when I’m trying to explain to you some of the apartheid things and the things that are going on in South Africa right now. You will not have the full context of some of that stuff until you live in that area.

And so for us, I’ve walked the streets in Palestine. I’ve been in some of the homes. I have seen the beautiful Christians, because you have many beautiful Christian Palestinian churches and people. And incredible people, loving people. And you think about the suffering that they’re going through. I believe—and the Jewish people—I believe as a church, we should rejoice with those who are rejoicing. But also to be in a place where we mourn and we grieve for what is happening in the Middle East. This should impact our hearts when we see some of those things. I truly believe it.

But now on the other side too, Israel, they should defend their country. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be surrounded by all of these nations that are trying to take you out. I was sharing with the SAGE group, one year that I was able to go to Israel, we were actually baptizing some people in one part of the Jordan River, and when you’re in the Jordan River, just right across the river, you have Jordan. And you see some of the military people there protecting the boundaries there.

And so Jordan is right there. And you think Syria is there. And Lebanon is all there. And the same way is to say—okay, I mean, it’s all well for those of you from Superior, so don’t panic, right? If Superior was the enemy, because they’re Packer fans, usually there’s kind of like this, at least there’s somewhat of a limit there. We can handle that. But what if it became so that there’s missiles from Superior that are pointed out to Duluth? Now that is in a sense what Israel lives with every day for centuries, right?

And so, like I said, in the natural, they need to respond in this way. They probably have to go in and take out some of these terror groups, I think in the natural. I don’t know, their leaders have to pray and figure out.

But how do you bring some of these pieces? When you think about the Beatitudes and even Romans, how do you respond as a believer? Is there a different way to respond? Yes, and I don’t know, I can’t speak for Israel right now. You know, I said, they gotta do, they have to go and pray their leaders.

It is fascinating when you look at Zechariah 12:3, it says, “On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the people. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves, and all the nations of the earth will gather against it.” This is nothing new from the get-go. For years and years, this little tiny little city, when you visit Jerusalem, it is not a big city. And it’s amazing when you say, “How can this little city be so hated by so many nations?” and where everyone wants to take it out. But it’s nothing new. What is happening right now is nothing new. You can just read scripture.

But here’s our mandate this morning from Psalms 122, verse 6, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure.”

Now in Acts chapter four, there’s an interesting story where Peter and John, through the Holy Spirit, they healed people, and they were just in front of the Sanhedrin, and the Sanhedrin is now telling them, saying, “We’re gonna let you go, but you cannot share the Gospel anymore. And this whole miracle and Jesus stuff, this has gotta stop.”

And I wanna read this for us in Acts chapter four, starting verse 24. It says, “When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer.” So they kind of went to some of the other believers, John and Peter, “…together in prayer to God. ‘Sovereign Lord,’ they said, ‘you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “Why did the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord, and against his anointed one.”’” Does that sound familiar? Right? And then it continues, “After they prayed,”—I’m just kind of skipping here to verse 31—“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

As a church, as Salem and as the universal Church, it is time for us to come together and pray. Not to fall trap to just the peace that you and I are experiencing right now. Somewhere, the Church needs to stand up and push against some of the evil things that are happening in our world right now. And that will continue. I really think things will continue to intensify because there are some things that need to fall into place for the return of Jesus Christ. Amen?

But we don’t sit back and just relax and say, “Let me just drink my cup of coffee because this stuff is happening out in the Middle East, or it’s happening in Ukraine, or it’s happening here.” We have a role to play as a church to pray—to pray at home, to have intercessory prayer. As we stand in the gap, my wife and I constantly pray for schools. I don’t know, every time my heart kind of sinks when I get these emails from the school that says, “Man, there was some kind of threat again, they called in the police.” And so constantly, we had one again this week for Denfeld. And so every time I just hear those things, like, and it’s like, okay, it’s kind of false alarm, I’m like, ‘Whew.’ But we pray, we pray in the morning. We stand in the gap for our schools. And the Lord will protect our kids and our church gatherings.

And so just because it feels and looks safe right now, in the spiritual realm, I want you to know that there’s an evil one that is plotting and scheming. And he’s after your family, and he’s after our church, and he’s waiting for us to become comfortable and say, “Man, I trust in the president, I trust in our military, I trust in our intelligence services.” At the end of the day, we only put our trust in one thing, and that is our Savior, and that is God. Everything else will fail us. Don’t put your trust just in earthly and worldly things. Things can happen and change overnight. And as a church and as America, we gotta be ready for it.

It is amazing how quickly things can change, right? And in one Saturday, it impacted the whole world. And this thing can escalate, and it can continue to bring profound impact into this world. But again, we don’t have to be fearful—even the songs that we were singing this morning—when we have put our hope in Christ, it’s all good. It is all good. We can experience the peace and the joy of the Lord in the midst of all of these crazy things that are happening around us.

People ask me about End Times and eschatology, and I don’t know exactly, most of you have probably read Ezekiel 38. When you’ve read Ezekiel 38, a lot of it sounds very interesting and familiar in what is happening right now. You can easily close your eyes reading Ezekiel 38 and say, “there it is.” I don’t think we’re quite there if you really go into a lot of the details in Ezekiel 38. And again, this is all about your End Time view, right? Some of you might say, “No, that all happened.” Some of you might read that and say, “No, that is all coming.” At least in my view, Ezekiel 38, Ezekiel 39, 40, all of that, it’s all coming in my End Times view. And again, we might disagree. But I want you to know in all of this that God is in control.

And in Luke 28, when it comes to End Times, Jesus was sharing with them the signs. We have this in Luke 21:28, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift your heads because your redemption is drawing near.” How exciting! For most of that, that’s exciting.

And so I don’t know exactly in God’s timeline where we’re at. We might have another week on this earth; we might have another 50 years. We might have another 100 years. I don’t know. But it seems like that time clock is speeding up. And when we think about major movements that happened in 1948, when Israel became a nation, right? I think that was a significant moment. I truly believe that this is a very significant moment in the big picture of what God is doing. Do I know the time, the hour? Obviously not, nobody knows. But here every day that we’re alive and that we live, we’re a day closer to Jesus returning.

I have no power and that’s way too much work. I just have a teenager and just marriage, that keeps me busy enough to kind of keep things in sync, and a church, right? So my hands are full. I cannot worry about all of the End Time stuff, but praise the Lord, God’s got it, and He’s gonna bring it together.

But we are called to pray and to stand in the gap. And today we’re gonna pray for Israel, but we’re gonna pray for just whatever is happening in the Middle East. And I want us to—if there’s areas, I think the rejoicing piece, just like America, Israel, in the last several months, you’ve maybe seen some of the stuff that was going on there. They were so divided as a nation, very much divided. And through this hardship right now, it seems like they’re at least united. And so that’s the good thing and we will rejoice.

But I wanna say even for us now, let’s stay united and let’s not get too distracted. I think it’s gonna get messy. I think a lot of things are gonna change here in the coming weeks. I do believe that nations will turn against Israel if they go into Gaza, and you see some of the stuff that is happening. But let us stay the course. Let’s not join the crazy voices that’s out in the world. We have a biblical mandate: to be united and to pray. That is our job this morning.

And let us not slumber and sleep as we think about our own communities. Let’s pray for each other.

Satan—I don’t wanna scare you. I’m just saying—Satan is out there. He’s in our communities, when you think about addictions, when you think about families that are experiencing all kinds of challenges, Satan is busy.

And the church is sometimes so busy with being divided and busy with foolish stuff that we lose sight of this, that we are supposed to love God, love people, and, man, stand in the gap and pray.

And so this morning I wanna invite you. (We’re not gonna do John, we’ll do it next week.) We’re gonna go through some of these slides this morning. I’ve got a microphone here ready.

I wanna ask us to be united and to pray. And so we’re gonna do several things. We’ll go slide by slide, give some moment and time for you to respond. But we’re gonna pray for peace in the Holy Land. We wanna pray for that.

And then pray for the protection of innocent people and Christians in Israel and in Gaza.

Pray that Christ would be made known as God fulfills His eternal purposes for Israel.

This is really the time when we think about there is a God moment right now for people to receive Jesus Christ as their savior. Over this past week, you have Jewish people, you have Palestinian people, that died and that probably might be experiencing Hell right now. And there are nations that are full of people that are without Jesus Christ. And that should break our hearts.

But let us pray, when we hold on to some of these promises, when we think about God’s Word, it says that He can take all of this and turn it around for His good, for those that love the Lord. And so we’re gonna pray this morning that He will use this messy, ugly, bloody situation and that the Holy Spirit will bring revival to Gaza. That the Holy Spirit will bring hope and revival to Israel because many of them are lost as well.

At the end of the day, if you don’t have Jesus Christ as your personal savior, I don’t care from which nation and tribe you are, then you can’t be part of Jesus. That’s what kind of in our last time that we were reading through John 13, that beginning part where Jesus was washing their feet and He’s talking to Peter and He’s like, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of me.” And He’s not talking about me washing their feet, He’s trying to say, you need to be washed by the blood of Jesus Christ, all of your sins. And He wants to do that for every person that will call on His name, amen? He will do it for every Palestinian, He will do it for every Jew, He will do it for every person that is in West Duluth, even those in Superior. I don’t know how He’s gonna do that, but… just kidding.

So we serve a good God, and I want you to be hopeful. Don’t get so caught up in all of the End Times stuff. I think there’s a good place, it’s good to know some of that, but at the end of the day, who of us really know?

All I know is this, is Luke 21:28, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near.” And we have a role to play.

It’s time for the church to wake up; it’s time for the church to be united. Not just our church, but every church in this world, amen?

So I’m gonna invite you, we’ve got a microphone. I wanna ask you to just close your eyes. I want you to just really intercede today for what is happening in the Middle East. Let’s respond.

I don’t wanna beg you to come and pray. We’re the church. Forget about who thinks what and how you pray and how you don’t pray and don’t try and use elegant words. Let’s bring it before the Lord. Let’s trust him to do big things. So I’ll have this first slide up as the Holy Spirit leads you and just to come and pray. Let’s first of all, pray for peace in the Holy Land. So come on up and then we’ll switch to the next slide.

[Congregational prayers – not transcribed]

Father God, thank you for this sweet moment just in your presence this morning and that we can be your church and to just be united and to pray, to stand in the gap this morning for the Middle East.

Father, I pray that maybe whatever is gonna happen in the coming days, that we won’t be drawn into things from a worldly perspective, but that we will continue to have a biblical view on things, that we will really have your word in front of us.

And as we try and make sense of whatever is happening and going to happen, Lord, that we would listen, that we’ll maybe quiet some of the different voices from this world and that we will really seek your voice in all of this. Lord, help us to act the way that you want us to act and to live out scripture, to love you, to love people, to forgive, to show hospitality, to just humble ourselves, to be servants.

We wanna do that well. And in all honesty, Lord, just in my own life, I fall short in so many of these areas and I wanna do a better job with those hard things. And so help us as a church to do that well.

Break our hearts for what is happening in the Middle East. Help us to pray and to stand in the gap for them all week, all month, all year, however long it will take.

And thank you, Lord, this morning that we are reminded of some of the prophetic words that have gone before us as we study and look at Revelation. Lord, prophetic words and the craziness of this world isn’t there to scare us. But when we look at the prophetic words, it reminds us that you have a plan.

And when we see the things that have fallen into place, we realize that, man, God’s got this, that there’s no surprise, there’s no attack, that is a surprise to you. You are in control and we’re grateful. Thank you that you’re in control of our lives this morning, of our families, of our church, and we wanna just place all of these things again in your hands, and we ask that you would reign in our lives. Not for us just to do this from human wisdom, but that we would really tap into your plan.

This morning, if you’re sitting here and you have never given your life to Jesus Christ, if Christ is not the ruler and the king of your life, you’ve been maybe doing life in your own power and your own wisdom and the Holy Spirit is not part of your life, and even if you’re sitting here and you’re like, “Man, if the world comes to an end this morning, how will the afterlife look like? Will I spend eternity with God and with those that have been faithful in the past?”—as we think about Hebrews 11 and Hebrews chapter 12.

And this morning we know this, that it’s not hard. Jesus paid the price; he made an easy way for us by dying on the cross. And so kind of that first step for us this morning and maybe the first step for you if you have never done this, is to just say, “Jesus, I am a sinner in desperate need of you. Thank you for dying on the cross for me, for all my sin, all my shortcomings. I cannot save myself, I cannot save myself with good deeds. It’s all a free gift by the grace of Jesus Christ. And I receive you now into my life. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Wash me with the blood of Jesus. In Jesus name, amen.”

If you’ve prayed that this morning for the first time, I want you to know that heaven rejoices and as a church we rejoice with you. And if you wanna have more conversation about what that all means, please call the church or talk to maybe believers that’s been walking with Christ for a long time; they would love to have conversation with you. But feel free to call any of us, ask for Christo, he’s got all of the answers. Just kidding.

Let’s stand together and let’s worship.