From Fear to Freedom

Israel scholar Doctor Charlie Dyer. And I'm John Jaeger. Maybe you wonder, how do you share the gospel with a Jewish person? Because of cultural, historical, and religious differences, it's sometimes challenging to kind of navigate a gospel conversation with somebody from a Jewish background. You ever wondered, though, how the professionals do it?

Jewish people. Now, to receive this helpful assortment of tracks, all you need to do is visit Life in Messiah org and click on the Moody Radio button there for more information. That's Life in messiah.org. Don't miss out on this great opportunity.

over what victory in Gaza actually looks like. Israel has said their goal is to destroy Hamas, but they can push to eliminate Hamas's leadership and render the different military battalions. They're incapable of being an effective fighting force. But as one Israeli military official remarked, actually destroying Hamas isn't possible because Hamas is an idea and it's an idea supported by most Palestinians. A different part of your group might be put in charge, but if they have the same

Islamic ideology, then little will have really changed. The situation in the North with Hezbollah is more complicated, and that's reflected in the mixed messages coming out of the region. The US announced it's working to prevent an all out war between Israel and Hezbollah. But three days later, the US assured Israel of its support in the event of such a war. And then they announced that they'd be

unlikely to help if Iran became involved. So what's really happening? Well, both Israel and Hezbollah are rattling their sabers, suggesting that if war comes, the other side will suffer greatly. And in one sense, that's true. If war comes, Israel will do everything it can to try to wipe out Hezbollah's military ability. On the other side, Hezbollah will try to knock out Israel's power generating stations, its water desalination plants,

its military bases and airports and other vital infrastructure. And both Iran and the US remain the wild cards. To what extent would they enter the fight now? As a result, much of the saber rattling is an attempt to get the other side to back down. Neither really wants a war, at least not right now. Israel wants Hezbollah to move away from the border so its people can return there in the north. And Hezbollah wants the war in Gaza to end so that they can claim victory in their

support of Hamas. Surprisingly, there is at least some reason for optimism. A look beyond all the headlines, and you can see that both sides have stayed within clearly defined red lines. Hezbollah has fired rockets into Galilee, but they've not fired their long range rockets toward Tel Aviv or other cities in Israel. And Israel hasn't launched a ground invasion into Lebanon. So while each side is making threats, neither has crossed certain red lines that would lead to

all out war. The restraint is deliberate. Now. The situation could change very quickly and dramatically, but right now it seems as if neither side wants to be the first to launch that all out war.

within Shas to declare the coalition's days are numbered. And then the High Court just this week issued a unanimous ruling saying the government must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men into the Israeli Defense Force and discontinue funding draft eligible men studying at religious schools. Currently, there are over 60,000 ultra-Orthodox

students exempt from military service. The ultra-Orthodox parties have in the past said this is a red line, and it could cause them to leave the government, at least as far as Netanyahu is going. He's been doing everything possible to keep all the coalition plates spinning. But the unity that appeared following the October 7th attacks seems to be rapidly falling away now. At some point, one of these issues will become so great that a coalition partner will bolt,

joining the opposition in a vote of no confidence. And when that happens, new elections will have to be called. Now, that doesn't mean Netanyahu will be gone. He remains in charge until after the elections and until after a new coalition can be formed. And that can take a while, since they have to garner 61 seats together to form that coalition in the Knesset. But change does seem to be coming sooner rather than later.

spending was by the US, followed by China. Russia is reportedly revising its nuclear doctrine to make it easier to use its nuclear weapons in a conflict. Israel is most concerned about Iran because they believe Iran will use its nuclear weapons against Israel once they acquire them. Now, as a result, Israel has been modernizing its nuclear arsenal, even

though they don't publicly acknowledge even having nuclear weapons. One report suggests Israel has the eighth largest stockpile of stored nuclear weapons, and that report said the number was 90. But a book written several years ago by Seymour Hersh suggests the number could be as high as 200 nuclear weapons. No one outside Israel, though, really knows. What does seem to be clear is that Israel has said it won't allow the Iranians to possess nuclear weapons, and that's more

than just political rhetoric. Iran has built several of its nuclear facilities hundreds of feet underground to protect them against attack by Israel. But Israeli leaders have said no facility is beyond their ability to attack. So unless the US and the West force Iran to stop or step in to somehow stop them, we might learn. If Israel does have just such a plan.

And the problem is the salt's been collecting at the bottom in that area at a rate of nearly eight inches a year, which has been raising the water level and threatening to flood the hotels along the shore. Starting in 2020, the government required the salt to be dredged from the seabed and returned to the northern part of the Dead Sea. Now they've been collecting it 16,000,000m³ of salt every year, but they still haven't worked out an

approved plan for redepositing it. And in the meantime, it's piling up along the shore and near the northern end of that. Tongue of land that divides the Dead Sea in two. The head of the state's Israel Geological Survey claimed at a conference that in six years that mountain of salt could be not only visible from Masada, but

would be as tall as Masada, which is 1400ft. Now, I don't want to minimize the problem because it does need to be resolved, but it seems there are ways to spread that salt out and not make that giant mountain. But in the meantime, if you travel to Israel, just beware. If your guide points to a large pile of salt near Masada and says it's the pillar of salt from God's judgment on lot's wife, uh, it's not quite that old.

Stay listening for the story of a German girl in war torn Europe who moves from fear to freedom. Hey, welcome to segment two of the land and the book I'm John Gager. If we've never met before, I cannot wait to introduce you to today's guest. But first, here's a way to put a spotlight on Jesus as you interact with a Jewish friend. The Old Testament is rich with prophecy. How much of that, though, can you really

talk about in a conversation with your Jewish friend? For example, what about Daniel's prophecies concerning the Maccabees and the events of Hanukkah? Roy Schwartz is with Chosen People Ministries. Are we on safe ground talking about this kind of stuff?

Antiochus and the events of Hanukkah. Now, most Christians don't know that, but I suggest you study that and see how Daniel and Hanukkah fit together, and that will blow the mind of a Jewish person that you are interested in those things. All right.

to those striving to move from fear to freedom. Using her personal story of how her family found Christ relevant during wartime. She inspires eager listeners to find Jesus as their all sufficient source of strength. She's written several books, including Refuge and From Fear to Freedom. It's a great honor to welcome you to the land and the book, Leona.

song in my heart and mind changed later. Hmm.

town called Lipina. Now it's Poland. And on the last day of school in that part of Poland, I was not fast enough for the teacher to get up and give the Heil Hitler salute in class. The teacher called me forward in front of the whole class and slapped my face so hard that the fingerprints were left on my cheeks for days. Wow. That was my last day of school under the Hitler regime.

I knew there was something different about it. And I was still fearful when my mom took us four children into the corner of a couch or a room full of 29 people and prayed, Lord Jesus, take all of us. Don't let one of my children remain behind. That made me perk up. Let all of us. I didn't really know what she meant. Did that mean I could die for a mom to pray that prayer? Yes.

fixed them soup. So how did we live? I don't really know. I just knew it was a miracle. But the greatest miracle was when the gentleman who took us in a stranger, we had never seen him here was a mom with four kids, and an elderly grandma took us into his home. He lived by himself, and he would usually get a certain amount of potatoes rolled in from the street right into his basement, and he got the bill from the farmer, and he said, I didn't

order two batches of potatoes for the whole winter. And he said, well, that's what you have now. You have to use them. And that was the start of our not starving right away. And for my mom not getting boiled on her legs and for my brother not having boils on his legs and for our swollen bellies, that was a start of a great miracle. The whole survival was a miracle. Also, when my brother got a little pig's head from a Russian at one time. Oh, that was soup for days and days, huh?

in the courtyard. He was in his late 70s. I looked out of the kitchen window and here was this soldier with a sword right above the preacher. That was a scary moment. Another scary moment was when the war was finally over. My mom had dared go to Berlin with lots of other folks. Yes, to find out if my dad was still alive. When she came back, she was taken captive by two Russians. They came and held their guns and her back. That was a scary moment for me, because.

This was January in Germany. It gets pretty cold, but she was trying to be a comforter to those who were in that same dungeon.

And the day of the reunion came seven and a half years later in a refugee camp. We had one little room, two bunk beds with straw, of course. And my mom was sleeping on a cot. And when my dad finally came home, there was no room for him to even sleep in our room. He had to sleep in a public hallway right across from the public restrooms. But the joy of my mom and us four kids in this refugee camp, we lived for another several years.

you can't be, because that's not the truth. The truth is, we have to say, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. Please come into my heart and save me and mean it and live for God and for Christ, and have this faith should the bad days come in this country.

Bible open. Why? Because you have sent in questions via email, and we're here to answer those questions. Charlie, before we get to our first question of the day, something we should all be thinking about, how do you share the gospel with a Jewish person? Because of cultural, historical, and religious differences, it's sometimes challenging to navigate a gospel conversation with somebody from a Jewish background. Maybe you've wondered how the professionals do it. Yeah, and.

gospel among the Jewish people. To receive this helpful assortment of tracks, all you need to do is visit life in Messiah org and click on the Moody Radio button there for more information. That's Life in messiah.org. Don't miss out on this great opportunity.

but it does relate to rewards for faithfulness. And he seems to come back to this same idea of rewards or lack of rewards later in Second Corinthians 510. Now the second passage that comes to mind is Colossians three. In verses 24 and 25, there Paul talks about our receiving the inheritance as our reward. The third that comes to mind is first Timothy 617 to 19, where Paul talks about storing up treasures for ourselves by doing good.

Now I see this being similar to Jesus's words in Luke 12, where he talks about storing up treasures for ourselves in heaven. I think we'll appear before the Bema Seat judgment of Jesus to give an account of our faithfulness while here on earth. It has nothing to do with our salvation, but it will impact our future reward and service for eternity. We'll have different places of service in the Millennial Kingdom. The apostles were told they would sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel,

and I used to teach my students this way. I'd say it's somewhat tongue in cheek, that someday someone's going to be in charge of running the city of Chicago during the millennium, and someone else might be in charge of running the dog pound. And depending on how faithful we were here in this life.

you and answer to your prayers. Well, Paul never visited Colossae during his missionary journey, but he was planning on doing so. Evidently, according to that verse in first Timothy one verse three, Paul says to Timothy, I urged you when I went to Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus, so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrine.

But there was never a time in the book of acts when Paul left Timothy in Ephesus, while he traveled on into Macedonia, and then in Titus one five, Paul wrote, the reason I left you in Crete was. And then he gives an explanation. But he never stopped or ministered in Crete. He only passed through on his way to Rome, on as a prisoner on the ship. And it tells me that Paul likely visited Colossae, and that he certainly visited Ephesus again, leaving Timothy there and Crete leaving Titus there.

And one final detail Paul wrote the book of Romans from Corinth toward the end of. His third missionary journey, and in Romans 15 he told him he hoped to visit Rome while passing through on his way to Spain. That suggests he had a plan to preach the gospel there in Spain. Now, if I put all that together, I suspect when Paul was released from prison in Rome, he traveled first to Spain. He then went back to Crete and Ephesus, where he also went inland and visited Colossae.

And then he left Titus in Ephesus and traveled to Troas and on to Philippi. And somewhere in Macedonia is likely where he was arrested for the second time, and then taken to Rome, not even having time to go back and retrieve his cloak, which he then tells Timothy to bring to him in Rome.

the death and resurrection of Jesus. And the book of Acts then begins in Jerusalem and describes the impact of Christ's death and resurrection until it arrives back in Rome at the end of acts. So Luke stopped in Rome because it was the equivalent of saying the gospel had now reached the world in terms of Luke dying before Paul appeared before Nero. I can say for certain, Luke hadn't died before Paul was brought before Nero. And I

say that because of two verses in second Timothy. In second Timothy 411, Paul says, only Luke is with me, describing his final time in Rome. And then in verses 16 to 17 he describes his appearing before Nero. So Luke was with Paul right up to the very end, and I find that really encouraging.

Day of Atonement. In Leviticus 1612 and 13, Aaron was to take that censer full of burning coals from the altar before the Lord, and take him behind the curtain. While the Greek word used in Hebrews nine normally refers to the altar of incense, that same Greek word is used to refer to a censor in the Septuagint translation of Ezekiel eight and in Second Chronicles 26. In the same way, I believe the word in Hebrews nine can be understood to refer to a censer rather than just

the altar of incense. I believe it is clear in the Old Testament that the altar of incense was located outside the veil, but on the day of Atonement, coals from that altar, along with the incense that would normally be placed on that altar, were brought into the Holy of Holies before God's presence above the cherubim on the

mercy seat. So in that sense, the incense censer, functioning in the same way as the altar that is representing the prayers of God's people before the Lord was indeed brought inside the Holy of Holies.

all the way around. So it appears to be a complete circle with the sky then stretched out above like a dome. And the people in that day then watched the movement of the sun, the moon, the stars as they circled overhead. And as a result, in this passage, I believe Isaiah is describing the world as it was perceived by those in his day to help them understand the grandeur of God. God sits above the circle or vault of the earth and stretches out the heavens like

a curtain. Now, compared to such a god, the human rulers, he goes on to say, who were threatening Israel are insignificant in their power. Now, one last detail. Some might say, well, that's rather unscientific to describe creation that way, but I don't see that as a problem since we do exactly the same thing. You know, my smartphone tells me the exact minute for sunrise and sunset each day. But of course, we know the sun doesn't technically rise or set in

a scientific sense. It's the Earth's rotation around that gives the appearance of the sun rising. Yet we still. Use that same kind of terminology because it describes what appears to happen from our own human perspective. Now, that's similar to what Isaiah was doing in using the terminology that was in place in his own day.

that Independence Hall was originally the Pennsylvania State House. In fact, it wasn't until 1824, when the now elderly French Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette returned to Philadelphia and referred to the building as the House of independence, and that's when the current name gained popularity. The Liberty Bell has

a similar history. The Bell was originally commissioned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn's Charter of Privileges, the state's original constitution, and there were three versions of the bell. The first version, imported from England, cracked when it was originally rung shortly after being hung in 1753. It was then melted down and a second version was recast later that spring, but no one was pleased with how it sounded, so the local foundry melted it down and tried a

third time, but that sound was still disappointing. Another bell was brought from England, but it didn't sound any better. So the original bell, now in its third version, is what remained in place. The crack in the bell didn't happen when the bell sounded to announce the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hairline cracks had appeared over time, but the major crack that made the bell unusable happened in 1846, when it was rung to celebrate Washington's birthday.

But by then it had also taken on a new name. The bell was originally simply called the Statehouse bell, but it was used as a cover drawing in an 1837 edition of an anti-slavery magazine, and it was the abolitionists who named it the Liberty Bell, in large part because of the inscription written on it. And that lengthy introduction

now brings me to my message for today. The inscription on the Liberty Bell is a quotation from the King James Version of Leviticus 2510 proclaim liberty throughout all the land onto all the inhabitants thereof. The abolitionists saw in this quote a biblical injunction to free all slaves and prisoners, and their name for the bell stuck. But that leads us to a book of the Bible that's uncharted territory

for many believers today. Leviticus, with its detailed emphasis on offerings, purification rituals, festivals and numerous other regulations, seems almost overwhelming to church age saints. And in many ways that's sad, because even though the church is not Israel, nor are we under the law, yet, Leviticus has much to say about practical holiness. It helps us understand what it means to live in a way that reflects God's holiness. One practical aspect of all this is God's proclamation of the

year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25. Every seventh year was to be a sabbatical year when the people were to let the land lie fallow. But immediately after the seventh of these sabbatical years, spanning a cycle of 49 years, God then announced a jubilee year, consecrate the 50th year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. Each one of you is to return to his family property, and each to his own clan. At first this additional year sounds

like a year of hardship. Do not so, and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines, for it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you. Eat only what is taken directly from the fields for two years in a row. Israel isn't to sow seed or tend its vines. They could only eat what they had stored up before or what grew of itself during that period. In essence, God called on the people once every generation to exercise the supreme test of

obedience and trust. Can you trust God to meet your physical needs for two years, and God did promise to meet those needs. I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. The year of Jubilee wasn't simply about trusting God to meet their needs. It was also a time for people to return to their own property. That is, those who had been forced to sell their land because of financial necessity were now to have their land returned.

In essence, those who had bought the land weren't actually buying it. They were just buying the number of crops it would produce until the next year of Jubilee. God was very clear on the issue of land ownership. The land must not be sold permanently because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. God also provided strict laws when it came to selling someone into slavery. If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him

work as a slave. He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you. He is to work for you until the year of Jubilee. Then he and his children are to be restored. He will go. To his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. Slavery is commonly practiced in that day was not to be practiced by Israel. The year of jubilee guaranteed freedom. History tells us that Israel struggled to

obey these regulations. In Jeremiah 34, the prophet described a time of extreme distress when King Zedekiah made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim freedom for the slaves. Everyone was to free his Hebrew slaves, both male and female. No one was to hold a fellow Jew in bondage. So all the officials and people who entered into this covenant agreed that they would free their male and female slaves and no longer hold them in bondage.

They agreed and set them free. But afterward they changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again. And God judged the people for their disobedience. You have not obeyed me. You have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen. So I now proclaim freedom for you, declares the Lord. Freedom to fall by the sword and plague and famine. God used the sabbatical years and the year of jubilee as object lessons for

his people. Practical examples of what it meant to walk by faith, trusting God and treat others with dignity and respect. And it was no accident that the year of Jubilee began as the Day of Atonement was ending. Have the trumpets sounded everywhere on the 10th day of the seventh month, on the Day of Atonement, sound the trumpet throughout your land.

The Day of Atonement was God's provision for sin, and it's followed immediately by a trumpet blast announcing the start of the 50th year, the year of Jubilee, to proclaim liberty throughout the land. John Peter Lange perhaps focused on that connection when he wrote the proclamation of Freedom was the most appropriate. Just after the great reconciliation of the people with God had been symbolically completed. There's so much

more we could say. But what does the 4th of July, the Liberty Bell, and Leviticus 2510 have to do with you this coming week? How about this? God has set us free from the penalty and power of sin in our lives. He's given us spiritual liberty, and yet we still find ourselves struggling, just like Israel did when they weren't allowed to plant or harvest for an additional year. But God says to us, just like he said to them, trust me and follow my instructions. I will go before

you and meet your needs. And throughout this journey, I will teach you lessons that can only be learned this way. Or, as the songwriter put it, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. Do so and you will discover true liberty.

That's the land and the book@moody.edu. And we encourage you to visit our website at the Land and the book.org for Danny Anderson, our producer, Charlie Dyer, our host, I'm John Gager, thanking you for listening to The Land and the book, a production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.