Sermon: Hamas' October 7 Attack
When God Hides His Face
#1743A
David C. Grabbe
Given 13-Jan-24; 36 minutes
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transcript:
Last Sunday was the 3-month anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. Even though most of the world has moved on from the incredible carnage of that day, those in the state of Israel will have the events of October 7 permanently carved into their memories.
Commentators have called the attack, “Israel’s 9/11,” which is a major understatement. While the number of Israeli deaths on October 7 was just over one third of American deaths on 9/11, America’s population is also over 30 times Israel’s population. Israel’s death toll relative to its size was twelve times higher than America’s death toll on 9/11. It would be like 36,000 people dying on 9/11 instead of 3,000. And that comparison is just for the deaths. It does not include the grievous and depraved atrocities that cannot be apprehended statistically, and which filled all but the most progressive among us with revulsion.
The October 7 attack demonstrated a wanton and debased mindset that most in the West cannot reconcile with basic humanity. The West, in general, believes that even in war, there should be rules and limits. Hamas, obviously, does not. So, the sane among us recoil at Hamas’ deliberate targeting of civilians, as well as using their own civilians for shields, and using their own schools and hospitals for cover. We are dismayed by what was perpetrated against families, against the elderly and against babies. And we are sickened by the torture, and by the sexual assaults of men as well as women.
Regarding that last point, I am sensitive to the sensibilities of parents with young children, and so I will speak of that particular category of violence euphemistically. What many have lost sight of is that that form of depraved violence is seen as a legitimate punishment or weapon within some interpretations of Islam. Now, not all Muslims hold to the most violent interpretation of their scriptures. But among some strains of Islam, Jews and other infidels are considered sub-human, and have no rights. There are basically no boundaries in how they are treated, including in and after death.
This is not limited to the Middle East or Africa. A steady occurrence of this same category of very personal violence in Europe remains underreported out of fear of being called racist or anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant. In just one English city, the city of Rotherham, 1,400 English girls and women were victims of such violence by Muslim immigrants, and those were just the cases that were reported. It happened over a span of years rather than all on one day, so it didn’t make the headlines like October 7. But EU crime statistics show that the majority of those convicted for this type of violence are Muslim immigrants, who themselves make up a small percentage of the overall populations.
Now, this is not to say that what happened on October 7 was just another day in immigrant Europe. Hamas’ actions plumbed new depths of depravity. If you have read The New York Times’ piece entitled, “Screams Without Words,” you know what I am talking about. If you have not read it, count yourself blessed. But the point here is that Islam and the West view human rights, and the rights of women in particular, quite differently, to put it mildly. Some things that are soundly denounced in the West, like this form of violence, are acceptable among hardline adherents of Islam, and Hamas certainly falls into that category.
What Hamas perpetrated on October 7 was pure evil. However, there is more to this event than Hamas’ overflowing wickedness, which could fill volumes and sicken us all, but which is not my intent for today. There is another aspect to this event that has been entirely lacking in nearly all the coverage, and even many evangelicals won’t go near it. What we will see today is that what happened on October 7 fits within a biblical pattern that we need to keep in mind because it will keep happening as this age draws to a close.
I’m sure most of you have heard about the music festival at Re’im where much of the carnage happened. It was the site of the worst Israeli civilian massacre ever. Of the 859 civilians slaughtered throughout the land that day, 364 of them were at that festival. If you do the math, 42% of the civilian deaths on October 7 took place at that festival, as well as many of the aforementioned acts of personal assault and other unspeakable deeds.
The Times of Israel called the festival an “all-night desert ‘nature party’,” and said that it was held in honor of the Sukkot festival, Sukkot being the Hebrew word for “Tabernacles.” Remember, October 7 was the Eighth Day, as well as a weekly Sabbath. This festival was allegedly part of Tabernacles. But if you dig deeper, a very different picture emerges.
The festival was a desert rave, with plenty of drugs and alcohol. It was named “Supernova Sukkot,” and produced by a group called the Tribe of Nova. It was part of a travelling, worldwide festival, called “Parallel Universe.” This was the first time it had come to Israel. I will read some excerpts from the official event flyer. The main image on the flyer is a Gaia symbol, so the fountainhead of this festival is earth worship. Quoting from the event flyer:
“. . . the most powerful and meaningful psy trance music festival in one of the most recognized and active psy trance nations, is already making its way [to Israel].
For anyone wondering, psy trance is short for psychedelic trance, which is a form of music that is structured to mildly hypnotize and heighten the consciousness. One of the headline performers in the lineup was a group called Astral Projection, which is named after the paranormal, out-of-body experience. So, you get some idea of what was in the air before Hamas’ rockets were. Quoting again:
. . . . This time, during the upcoming Sukkot holiday, one of the biggest, most influential, and revered festivals in the world, is coming to Israel. . . . the central driving force behind it is a set of fundamental and important human values: Free love and spirit, environmental preservation, [and] appreciation of rare natural values that the festival embodies. Every two years, it spreads the love for exquisite electronic music in all its variations, establishes an authentic connection to the social-artistic ideology, and channels all these elements for empowerment and the dissemination of the trance culture, which emerges as a universal cosmic light from the wild jungle and spreads throughout the world. The word "Supernova" refers to the explosion of a massive star, causing an immense burst of light in galactic terms. What can one imagine when these concepts intertwine during the upcoming Sukkot holiday?
A video clip broadcast by CBS and NBC shows partiers dancing under something called “prayer flags.” I had to look that up, but prayer flags are a Buddhist invention meant to carry the positive vibrations of thoughts and prayers on the wind. I never knew that prayers needed help to get to their destination. But the clip also showed the revelers dancing under a giant statue of Buddha. They were dancing before a graven image.
This festival was a blatant example of syncretism, of blending one of God’s institutions with elements that God despises. In addition to the Buddhist influence, it was officially a celebration of the human spirit, and of the creation rather than the Creator.
One news report mentioned that the drugs and alcohol hindered some of the partiers from being able to escape. As we know, drunkenness is a work of the flesh. So is sorcery, which translates a Greek word that indicates mind-altering drugs. The festival, with its psychedelic trance music, drugs, and indecent clothing, was—by definition—revelry, another work of the flesh.
In fact, all the works of the flesh were found at the festival. Among the video footage and the various accounts, there was ample evidence of forms of adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, drunkenness, heresies, and revelries. But the partiers did not bring all the works of the flesh with them. Some of the works of the flesh were initially missing. But the missing ones were then brought by Hamas. Hamas brought hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, envy, and hundreds of murders. Supernova Sukkot was anti-God from its beginning to its bloody end.
This was not good, clean fun, nor was there anything about it that related to Tabernacles except that it took place on the Eighth Day. The gods were different, but it was reminiscent of the Golden Calf incident, which was another event with dancing and a lack of restraint and clothing that was proclaimed to be a feast to the Lord by its organizer, but which the Lord had no part in. 3,000 Israelites died because of their part with the Golden Calf.
Incidentally, 3,000 is also the rough number of attendees of the Supernova Sukkot festival. When the festival organizers unveiled an exhibition that recreated the festival scene at the moment of the attack, one of the founders of the Tribe of Nova said in a hair-raising statement, “We will gather 3,000 people to dance again . . ..” And lest we forget, 3,000 was also the number killed on 9/11.
I could not help but think of the US response after 9/11, with national leaders defiantly proclaiming, “The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars,” thus fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 9:10. Those leaders had no clue what they were saying, and neither did the founder of the Tribe of Nova. “We will gather 3,000 people to dance again . . ..”
That syncretistic festival also rhymes with what God says in Amos 5. He says, “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies. . ..” He says, “Take away from Me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments” (Amos 5:21-23). A few verses later, God says that even as they were making sacrifices to Him in the wilderness, they also had other gods. And then He says, “Therefore I will send you into captivity . . .” (Amos 5:25-27). In another chilling rhyme, 40 of the revelers were taken into captivity on their feast day.
Now, let’s zoom out for a broader view of the modern house of Judah. In the book of Revelation, whose time setting is the Day of the Lord, just before His return, Jerusalem is called “Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8). Often the chief city in a nation embodies the overall characteristics of the whole nation.
Sodom is an easy reference to sexual perversion. Tel Aviv hosts one of the largest annual Pride parades in the world, and it has been voted one of the friendliest cities for the ever-changing alphabet people. Jerusalem has its own Pride parade that boasts upwards of 30,000 people.
But God calls Jerusalem, Sodom and Egypt. Egypt is a symbol for what God’s people have been delivered from, and specifically, foreign gods and bondage. This inaugural Buddhist, Earth-worshipping, psychedelic festival was a welcoming in of the very things that God desires to deliver His people from because they are ways of death.
The demographics of the modern state of Israel may help us to put things into perspective. Last year, 45% of Israeli Jews self-identified as secular. Another 1/3 identify as neither orthodox nor secular, but somewhere in between, faltering between two opinions. The remaining 20% or so practice a corrupted belief system that rejects Jesus Christ.
As Revelation points out, Jerusalem was the location of the death of the Messiah. John highlights that for a reason in his prophecy of the end time. Jesus was killed, in part, because He testified that Judaism’s works were evil, and because its traditions kept God’s people from recognizing and accepting God in the flesh. It won’t be until God intervenes that the House of Judah will mourn for the One whom they pierced (Zechariah 12:10).
The events of October 7 fit a general pattern of God pulling back His hedge for the purpose of bringing calamity. God often uses enemies to chasten His people, and those enemies may be far worse than those being chastened. This was the complaint of the prophet Habakkuk. In Habakkuk 1, God and Habakkuk agree that the coming Chaldeans are awful. God Himself describes the Chaldeans as being fierce, impetuous, dreadful, and terrible. Habakkuk cannot accept that God would suffer such a people to exist, let alone use them to punish His own. But God did then, and He will again, and this pattern fits with October 7.
As the scourge of secularism becomes ever-more entrenched in the nations of Israel and Judah, God’s word is scoffed at by unbelievers, and disbelieved even by many claiming to believe. Because of this environment, we must test ourselves as to whether we really believe what God says. It may take some work on our part to mentally plug in to what God says if we have been immersed in the anti-God news. Part of the challenge of our times is remembering that the Scriptures are not just words on a page, but that they are from the Creator God Himself, who does not change.
We will begin with Deuteronomy 28:
Deuteronomy 28:15 But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
Deuteronomy 28:32 [Think of the hostages:] Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all day long; and there shall be no strength in your hand.
Deuteronomy 28:49-50 The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young.
While not all the details here fit October 7, we can still see the same general themes. The enemy did not come from the end of the earth but from right next door. Even so, this shows that, when God judges it to be appropriate, He will bring a ruthless enemy that has no regard for basic human rights.
God gives a similar warning of evils that will befall His people a few chapters over:
Deuteronomy 31:16-18 And the LORD said to Moses: “Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, where they go to be among them, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ And I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they have done, in that they have turned to other gods.
Other translations say that the people will become easy prey, and many disasters, calamities, distresses, and adversities will come upon them. It won’t matter if they have a high-tech border or the strongest military in the region, or even in the whole world. If God’s nation doesn’t want the Almighty as its sovereign and it rejects Him, then He hides His face and pulls back His providence, allowing time and chance and natural and even supernatural forces to wreak havoc, affecting even the most helpless and least deserving of violence. When God hides His face, it opens the way for truly terrible things to happen. But the source of the problem is that the people forsake Him and break the covenant.
We will keep working our way through the Book, and pick up a principle of God’s judgment that may also challenge us. Please turn to Joshua 7. Just to refresh your memory, one man sinned in taking and hiding items that God had claimed. However, in verse 11, God says that “Israel has sinned.” He refers to the whole nation in describing the actions of a single man. When He then judged that sin, 36 Israelite men lost their lives, even though they were completely uninvolved in the greed and deception of Achan. This is how He looks at matters, which we may have a hard time accepting.
But just as a little leaven leavens the whole lump, so a little paganism, a little idolatry, a little sexual immorality can defile the whole nation. When God’s judgment falls, particularly when He hides His face and allows other forces to wreak destruction, things may not break evenly or fairly. But God is still justified.
And coincidentally—or not—the number of Israelites attacking the city of Ai (when those 36 were killed) was also 3,000. That number keeps showing up at significant events.
Please turn to I Kings 14, which contains an example of national immorality reaching a tipping point, and God bringing a Gentile nation in response:
I Kings 14:22-25 Now Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked Him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree. And there were also perverted persons in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel. It happened in the fifth year of King Rehoboam that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem.
So, Judah was guilty of idolatry, including some form of nature worship, and sexual perversion was entrenched. As a result, God at least allowed, if not caused, Egypt to attack. But this attack was a warning shot rather than the end. There were some later reforms and a cleansing of the land by King Asa, and things improved somewhat.
But the revival did not last, and as we know, Jerusalem was later destroyed by the Chaldeans, and the surviving Jews were carried off. We will see a snapshot of Jerusalem’s fall in the book of Lamentations. It is not pleasant, but it exemplifies what happens when God hides His face and allows His people to become prey because they have forsaken Him.
Lamentations 5:10-15 Our skin is hot as an oven, because of the fever of famine. [Think of the famine of hearing the word of the LORD that comes with secularism.] They ravished the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah. Princes were hung up by their hands, and elders were not respected. Young men ground at the millstones; boys staggered under loads of wood. The elders have ceased gathering at the gate, and the young men from their music. The joy of our heart has ceased; our dance has turned into mourning.
Those verses don’t need much commentary, but the parallels with October 7 are obvious.
Please turn back to II Kings 8. The event we will see is another example of God giving power to someone to be His instrument of punishment, knowing full-well the nature of the person involved. In this case, God’s instrument was Hazael, who was about to kill the current king of Syria and take his place. You might recall that, earlier, God had told Elijah to anoint Hazael. But Elisha is God’s prophet now, foretelling what will happen:
II Kings 8:11-13 Then [Elisha] set his countenance in a stare [at Hazael] until [Hazael] was ashamed; and the man of God wept. And Hazael said, “Why is my lord weeping?” [Elisha] answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword; and you will dash their children, and rip open their women with child.” So Hazael said, “But what is your servant—a dog, that he should do this gross thing?” And Elisha answered, “The LORD has shown me that you will become king over Syria.”
God gave Elisha insight into the evil that Hazael would do to the Israelites, and the barbarity here is not far removed from what Hamas perpetrated on October 7. Yet the key point is that God was the One who made Hazael king, knowing all of his terrible traits.
The carnal mind will ask where God was, overlooking that it was the nation that had moved away from God. Its as though all the previous and grievous sins are excused, but God hiding His face in response is the one thing that is inexcusable.
Mankind in general does not take sin as seriously as God does. Mankind also looks at judgment differently than God does, and does not understand that the sin of one person can reach out and affect others who may be completely uninvolved. As more of God’s people forsake Him, the danger increases that others of His people will be affected if He hides His face and allows evil to have its day, as He did with Hazael.
Please turn to Zechariah 14. This is a prophecy of the Day of the Lord, and God says that He will gather nations—Gentiles—against Jerusalem because of her apostasy:
Zechariah 14:1-3 Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem; the city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle.
So, first God gathers the nations against Jerusalem, but later He fights against them. He uses terrible nations for His own ends, and He allows those enemies to do what is in their nature to do, but He does not allow them to escape judgment, either. And He is justified in all that He does. The question for us is whether we fear Him enough to accept His judgments, and whether we grieve as much over what causes God to hide His face as over the terrible effects when He does.
Please turn to Ezekiel 9:
Ezekiel 9:3-4 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer’s inkhorn at his side; and the LORD said to him, “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it.”
What Hamas perpetrated was abominable, and we should be grieved over it. I don’t believe we have yet reached the place where God tells Jeremiah not to pray for the people. We should have empathy for those whose lives were shattered that day. Yet God’s focus here is not on the abominable effects of sin but on the abominations that cause the separation from Him.
Ezekiel 9:5-10 To the others He said in my hearing, “Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the temple. Then He said to them, “Defile the temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!” And they went out and killed in the city. So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell on my face and cried out, and said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?” Then He said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed, and the city full of perversity; for they say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see!’ And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head.”
October 7 was a foretaste of what lies ahead for a people that will not turn to God. But the house of Judah is not the only one in God’s purview. The house of Israel has the same sins as the house of Judah—it just doesn’t know who it is.
Idolatry and Sabbath-breaking, for which ancient Israel went into captivity, are rampant today in the nations of Israel, even among the religious, who are declining in number. Perversity is welcomed and celebrated, even within churches. And though some legalities have changed, Israelites are still murdering their children before they have a chance to draw breath.
October 7 was shocking because we are accustomed to God’s longsuffering. We are not used to God hiding His face so His people become prey. But as we survey the cratered moral state of the nations of Israel and Judah, what is also surprising is that we haven’t seen God hide His face more often. We take for granted His upholding and continuing to bless His wayward people, and we are shocked when He reminds us that He is serious about sin because we lose sight of that so quickly.
Let us not be among those who shrug and continue on, unconcerned about the great peril our nations are in. Truly, this is a serious time, and it is time to seriously consider whether God’s Kingdom and His standard of righteousness are truly the top priorities in our lives, so that God does not have cause to hide His face from us.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_trance
https://www.eventer.co.il/event/novaparalellotranslate/wCqCL
https://canadafreepress.com/article/muslim-migration-and-rape-statistics-in-europe
https://concit.org/on-hijabs-rape-and-shariah-law/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-005044_EN.html
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2015-003081_EN.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45269764
https://www.timesofisrael.com/death-count-from-music-festival-massacre-on-oct-7-up-to-over-360/
https://youtu.be/iyOPGPnRRBk?t=42
https://www.barrons.com/news/israeli-exhibition-reconstructs-scene-of-festival-attack-6da7e19c
https://www.thefp.com/p/tik-tok-young-americans-hamas-mike-gallag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-779888
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021)
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